From Green to Gray – Soaring with Sustainability and Crashing in Defeat Over Reality
Today owners buy into the aspect of a high performance building to later find that the well spent money is not providing the return on investment or any other benefits. In a recent study, it has been shown that after implementation, a drastic decline in performance results in buildings from the lack of education of property managers and facility managers on their new systems. Owners can expect savings of up to 10-15 percent in energy efficiency with improvements in building maintenance. The lack of continuous commissioning stalls the results. When property managers and facility managers don’t understand their energy management systems and how they work – they fail to work. Without realizing the full potential of the systems, the systems become useless and provide very little savings. Savings in buildings could be reduced by 40 percent with the right operational strategies in place.
Achieving true sustainability requires continuous commissioning and education. Owners and operators must be educated so that they can evaluate building decisions based on life – cycle costing. Monitoring systems and comparing utility costs provides valuable information and states exactly how things are going in relation to energy reduction. High performance buildings require specialized maintenance. Unfortunately, it can be deferred. When deferred, all the costs increase as well. Education will always be cheaper and provide the best results.
Check out ASHRAE Technical Resource Group (TRG) 7, Tools for Sustainable Building Operations, Maintenance and Cost Analysis.
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