Enigin Update - Buildings Desperate for Energy Efficiency Upgrades
ACCORDING to the Philadelphia Inquirer, owners of the city’s commercial property spend 29 percent more on energy than the U.S. national average.
The paper highlights a new study that highlights the region's aging buildings as prime candidates for energy efficiency retrofits. The study looked at the region's 9,058 middle to larger commercial and industrial buildings, reporting that around 77 percent were built before 1990 and would hence benefit from energy efficiency improvements.
The study was completed by Econsult Corp. for the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster for Energy-Efficient Buildings (GPIC).
Laurie Actman, GPIC's deputy director for management and administration is quoted in the Inquirer as saying: "Based on all this data analysis, we found that about 7,000 properties, or 300 million square feet of space, meet the requirements for consideration of an energy retrofit. That's a lot of potential activity moving forward."
This study, along with a companion study of governmental policies which affect or hinder building energy efficiency upgrades, are planned to form a baseline for GPIC's work, which the paper reports is funded by $130 million of federal grants over five years.
Actman also told the Inquirer: "The purpose was really to identify what is the world of opportunity here, and what are the opportunities and hurdles in the policy world that we need to address, in order to really create this market for retrofit in the region."
As we have often reported on these pages, the U.S. Government reports that buildings account for nearly 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption and carbon emissions - hence the market is big. With commercial buildings representing around one-fifth of the country’s energy consumption, with office space, retail space, and educational facilities representing about half of the commercial sectors energy consumption.
The study said that owners of commercial property across the Philadelphia region spend on average $2.84 per square foot annually on energy, which is 29 percent above the $2.21 national average and fourth highest among 14 large cities studied.
To identify the "low hanging fruit," as far as the biggest gain in the shortest time for energy efficiency improvements the study considered a properties end use, construction materials and shape. It discovered that the optimal buildings for energy improvements would be the older, low-rise, six floors or less, brick built building.
The study also identified, based on federal statistics, 2,047 buildings as retail, hospitality, or health-care businesses, which consume more energy than the average.
Enigin Distributors have the technology from Enigin to upgrade the energy efficiency of older and new buildings. Enigin plc's solutions range from providing detailed energy data in real-time through to control systems to reduce energy consumption - this range reduces energy consumption, CO2 emissions and energy bills.
Pictures of Philadelphia by Payton Chung reproduced under CCL.
