Smart Buildings and Sustainability
Over the last couple of years, the conversation around sustainable and energy-efficient buildings has exploded. Industry stakeholders often state that smart buildings are the route to achieving low carbon cities, but how?
There is a huge demand for healthier buildings for both occupants and the environment. There is pressure to develop strategies that reduce emissions, save energy, and speed up the transition to renewable energy sources in our cities.
Demand for urban space will only continue to grow - according to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), 55% of the world's population live in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050.
Cities cover 3% of the earth's land surface, yet they are responsible for more than 70% of all carbon emissions (World Economic Forum 2021). Ultimately, smart buildings can create a smart city; small collective efforts can lead to huge results. Software, automated sensors and innovative materials are being used to boost the energy efficiency of everything from heating and lighting to security systems. The government's new target will see the UK aim to cut CO2 emissions by 68% by 2030 (City AM 2020).
It is reported that new smart systems can deliver energy savings of up to 25% (HSBC 2020).
SmartCore reduces energy usage by providing improved insight. Data captured via virtual and physical sensors are converged into one user-friendly dashboard. Data from various other devices and systems can also be collected; this is then available to be packaged and sent to the cloud or a third-party analytics platform. These data insights allow Building and Facility Managers to make quick value judgements that improve the overall performance of their building.
Currently, 'buildings account for about 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions… the UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019 announced a 'Zero-Carbon Buildings for All' initiative aimed at decarbonizing all new buildings by 2020 and all existing buildings by 2050' (HSBC 2020).
Awareness around embodied carbon is growing. 'The building and construction sector accounted for 36% of final energy use and 39% of energy and process-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2018, 11% of which resulted from manufacturing building materials and products such as steel, cement and glass' (IEA 2019). However, smart technologies, such as SmartCore, can also make old buildings intelligent; more people are adapting and upgrading their current building instead of building a new one. This reduces the carbon incurred within the construction process and further reduces energy usage within the building.
People must harness the power of data to meet the need for net-zero carbon buildings.
"Weather data can really help organizations reduce waste. Producing products in certain temperatures will either aid or hinder the production and therefore produce more or less scrap. So actually, if we can get the temperatures and the lighting as optimal as they can possibly be for that unique working condition, the net effect is that you create a less substandard product and, therefore, less waste.
I think data can really be used to drive change, but I think people must have an open mind and be a bit more proactive."
Check out the full conversation with Luke Wilson from Triangle on our podcast, or read the transcript here.
Smart software platforms that aggregate and store data, provide analytics and graphical ways of visualizing information are essential for improved energy management.
Smart controls give buildings a "central nervous system" that balance and reconcile competing interests such as energy minimization, occupant comfort and grid stability. Return on investment (ROI) from smart building controls will vary, depending on external climate, cost of power, and other factors (Smart Buildings Magazine 2020).
Preventative maintenance data is of key importance. It provides Facility Managers with the opportunity to improve operational performance and act ahead of an issue occurring, therefore, improving the efficiency of a building; SmartCore's Monitoring Tool provides a high-level view of the performance of the building. It monitors power usage, room usage, wellbeing, CPU (Central processing unit) usage of the servers and more. It allows Facility Managers to conduct a quick health check, for example, giving them the ability to see if there has been a power spike that they might want to investigate further.
"But sustainability runs deeper than just energy, and societal and direct economic benefits can be increased in smarter buildings by orders of magnitude if space efficiencies and indoor environmental quality and occupant health opportunities are captured" (Design Intelligence 2019).
Demand for smart building services is growing in the competitive real-estate marketplace. Landlords are aware that they need to upgrade their buildings to attract future tenants; they are being compared against space that peers are leasing, and demand within the competitive marketplace is already growing depending on how and who has access to more in-depth building performance data, the services, and the deeper level of performance metrics available in the occupant-aware building will make tenants savvier.
ROI
The 3-30-300 rule discussed by JLL and many other influential industry players aims to show a sustainable return on investment.
"The "3" in this equation represents the utility cost for a building on a square foot per year basis. A retrofit energy-saving project in an existing building might save ten percent of that, or 30 cents a square foot per year. At approximately one magnitude of cost greater, the "30" represents the cost per square foot of rental space. A deeper knowledge of tenant space usage characteristics, as determined through data collected using smart building technology, could help justify an increase in tenants' space efficiency as part of a new fit-out of a building space. If this savings is even only ten percent, and it can be shown to enhance or change operational efficiency, that could result in savings of $3 per square foot per year. Finally, the building can be a catalyst for giving employees the means to create the space they want based on their preferences, resulting in increased health and wellness and productivity, working against a cost for people of $300 per square foot. This focus on the health and comfort of a building's occupants is a new priority for the next generation of buildouts. There is a lot of interest, especially among more progressive companies, to emphasize the wellbeing of employees…Once that value proposition is understood in existing buildings, then there is a whole new economic model" (Design Intelligence 2019).
Lighting Control
One of the biggest appeals of smart buildings is the superior occupant experience they create, but also 'integration with artificial intelligence and IoT in lighting systems provides operational efficiencies such as…intelligent illumination as per the requirement' (Allied Market Research 2019). Also, smart sensors can monitor the light level in a room and dim down the artificial lighting if enough natural light is entering a room – this is much more than a simple on/off sensor. A building can be scheduled to go into nighttime mode after 6pm and be controlled remotely for dramatically improved control. SmartCore goes way beyond traditional lighting control; find out more here.
"Commercial real estate is such a huge part of the world's assets and economies. Lighting has become such a significant part of the solution, and being 'open' is really important for that collaboration." – Roger Woodward, Smart Building Consultant.
AI & IoT
Buildings are complex systems involving air, water, and electricity circulation, so the use of smart sensors and IoT-based technologies helps to ensure these resources are delivered cleanly and efficiently.
"We have access to enormous amounts of data, some of which is from IoT devices. This allows us to work with that data, use intelligence, software, and algorithms to pull insights and show things like sustainability. We can start to think, what things can we do to optimize the system's ability to make the building more sustainable and efficient? Also, using machine learning to identify potential future faults and maintenance issues before they become a problem impacts the users because they're not having to deal with downtime, outages or things not working". - James Bellingham, Digital Building Portfolio UK, Siemens.
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Smart sensors & data
We now have buildings that talk to us, the cloud, and each other to protect us and make us comfortable while saving energy and cutting emissions. Sensors are key components of smart buildings; without the data, the Facility Manager wouldn't be able to understand how 'healthy' their building is in terms of energy consumption/waste. However, a comprehensive management and control solution is essential to view this data quickly and easily, to avoid getting overwhelmed by the masses of data available.
Interoperability
As soon as building systems can 'talk' with each other without the need for complex interfaces, the resilience of the infrastructure as a whole will ultimately be strengthened. It provides access to a greater volume of intelligence, as well as better use of building resources.
It is clear smart buildings present a lot of benefits for the environment and building occupants; however, a lack of integration across systems and devices seems to hinder the adoption of smart buildings.
"Part of this IoT movement is pulling different devices together into one ecosystem where data works together. I think it's important to have a platform in place that can work with different technologies and is technology agnostic. I think some of the systems that we've seen are very closed or, as I mentioned before, fulfil one purpose without thinking about how they fit into the wider ecosystem. Systems should also be able to work with older technologies as well as new ones…Collectively, as an industry, we've got to think about the whole lifecycle of a building and how we ensure forwards and backwards compatibility of technology". - James Bellingham, Siemens.