Empty and semi-empty offices, hotels, and shops are wasting huge amounts of energy during the coronavirus lockdown at a huge environmental and financial cost, according to findings published late last week.
Energy performance consultants Carbon Intelligence has revealed that energy use across a sample of 300 office, hotels, and retail buildings dropped on average by just 16 per cent in the last week of March, when the government mandated that people socially distance, avoid travelling, and work from home.
German government: Climate targets must be updated this year, regardless of Covid-19 disruption. Despite the strict social distancing measures preventing most, if not all, staff from entering the buildings, some buildings – the worst 10 per cent – were still using roughly 97 per cent of their typical energy demand.
The findings come as overall power demand in the UK and further afield has otherwise dropped significantly. In early April, energy consultancy Ember revealed that every country in Europe had seen electricity demand fall in the weeks prior, down by around two to seven per cent on average per week. But some analysts fear the bulk of the energy and emissions reductions have come from the closure of industrial sites and reduced transport emissions, while potential savings on offer from other sites are going unrealised.
The poor energy savings in the UK’s commercial building stock are largely due to ventilation and heating systems, Carbon Intelligence explained, which together accounted for roughly half of buildings’ energy use. Many empty buildings continue to operate central plant equipment and have not adjusted standard time schedules, it added. Smart building technologies can dramatically curb energy wastage, according to Carbon Intelligence founder and chief innovation officer Cian Duggan, because they allow facilities management teams to manage and monitor building performance remotely.
Moreover, there are huge long term environmental and financial gains to be had by improving energy management in commercial buildings, according to Carbon Intelligence. The top 10 per cent of buildings surveyed managed to more than halve their energy use during the first week of lockdown, each week saving roughly £4,200 and 5,600 kilograms of carbon dioxide – the equivalent of four return flights between London and New York.
The survey, which analysed the minute-by-minute energy usage of various components, including ventilation, AC, IT equipment and plant rooms, found that single occupier buildings managed to conserve more energy given that they were more likely to close completely. Buildings operating with a skeleton staff, on the other hand, fared poorly, given that staff were typically spread out across multiple floors, while buildings with older plants and control systems struggled to cut energy use at all.
Source: Business Green
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