On February 3rd, the White House issued President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative. One of the goals is to make commercial building space 20 percent more energy efficient by 2020.  Considering that commercial buildings consume about 20 percent of the energy used in the US, this could have a significant impact on our dependence on foreign oil and air quality.  However, I have a few questions:

  1. How will this reduction be measured? Does the plan address how commercial buildings will be monitored before and after energy savings upgrades?
  2. How are they going to quantify the improvements and validate the energy savings?

Energy dashboards provide benchmarking, monitor usage and account for seasonalization; thus giving the consumer the opportunity to act on energy conserving decisions in real-time.  Without the tools to measure, millions of dollars could be spent on initiatives that may not achieve the desired results.  Tracking and verification of any project is a necessary step to improving the process.  By not having a system in place to benchmark and validate the impact on energy savings, this could end up being a decision that was made with the best of intentions, but fails to deliver the anticipated results.  Today, most people use a 3-G network for communication, however, when it comes to analyzing energy consumption, we are in the Stone Age.

CrunchEnergy recently launched the CrunchBox™, a comprehensive utility usage reporting software that displays real-time information through a hosted client dashboard.

The CrunchBox™ dashboard provides a real–time snapshot of energy usage, trends, and energy loads.

Tools, like the CrunchBox, provide commercial businesses with an easy way to view energy consumption on demand, and get the data necessary to determine the return on their energy reduction investments. What do you think about the new Better Buildings Initiative? A good start? Half-baked attempt?  Please share your comments and ideas.

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