FMs will come under increasing pressure to measure and monitor their energy consumption as the government starts to get to grips with emissions from existing buildings, warns Gareth Vaughan.

The recession is taking a heavy toll on most industries and the building services sector is no exception. The sector skills council for the industry predicts that up to two fifths of all heating and ventilation professionals could lose their jobs during 2009. However, it also points out that things don’t have to be that bad.

The ‘green’ economy has the potential to offset many of the worst factors of the downturn and keep many thousands of valuable engineers in work. We will need these engineers more than ever in the future if we are to create a truly sustainable built environment, so to lose them now – possibly forever – would be extremely damaging in the long-term and make life difficult for FMs in the shorter term.

During a recent visit to the US hosted by the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA), I was able to listen to many speakers on the subject of the green economy.  Hard-nosed business people and management gurus alike recognised the opportunities that the green economy will bring to our sector.

MCAA president Lonnie Coleman spoke passionately about this issue and advised members to read a book by Van Jones entitled the 'Green Collar Economy'. This book challenges the status quo and is full of useful information for anyone looking to create energy savings and gain the most out of existing building stock, whilst at the same time retaining and up-skilling the workforce and making a profit.

On this side of the Atlantic, Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, recently stated: “The low carbon economy is the economy” – this was around the same time he was pelted with green custard (but perhaps we shouldn't read too much into that). He is, of course, correct and much of the country’s economic recovery will depend on low carbon building refurbishments, expansion of the renewable technologies market and energy efficiency. But talk is cheap – the government’s actions until now have not helped to create the low carbon economy they profess to champion.

For example, much of the legislation it has passed has focused on ensuring new buildings are energy efficient when the real effort must be aimed at existing buildings, which comprise 99 per cent of the total stock.

Tackling problems

At least 70 per cent of all non-domestic properties will still be in use in 2050, and commercial property is responsible for 17 per cent of the UK’s total CO2 emissions: existing buildings are where the largest carbon savings can be made. HVCA member firms also point out that a huge proportion of the problem can be tackled by focusing on technologies that are already installed in those buildings – simply by maintaining them properly and re-commissioning them where necessary.

Specialist building services firms are well equipped to tackle this issue immediately – we don’t have to wait for certain technologies to become more affordable – because we have the skills to go back into underperforming buildings, re-commission the services, upgrade controls and fit low energy lighting systems. Add to this the ability to improve insulation and seal leaking building fabric and you are well on your road to the 20 per cent reduction in carbon emissions we are supposed to achieve by 2020 – without doing anything radical.

The 80 per cent reduction by 2050, which is now a legal obligation, is another matter, but we can get on with helping FMs meet their immediate – and more realistic goals – today.

Radical action later

Sustainable design is not rocket science, but there is a growing perception among the general public that it has to be and that to make a difference you have to invest in radical solutions like ground source heat pumps and wind turbines.

Such technological elements have their place now and will play an increasingly important role in the future, but they should be further down the queue. We must address energy demand and waste first and, finally, there are a number of measures and incentives coming along that are designed to improve existing buildings.  As ever, our American friends have already coined a phrase for energy that is not used or is wasted: 'negawatts'.

The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) – a mandatory carbon trading scheme that comes into force across the UK next April – will focus the minds of many FMs on creating as many negawatts as possible. Any organisation with an annual electricity bill of around £500,000 and above – i.e. they are using more than 6,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity – is automatically included.

This measure has much to commend it because it is the first time the government has really focussed on tackling emissions from the commercial sector. The very large energy-intensive industries are already covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, so the CRC was announced in 2007 to tackle energy waste from smaller – but still significant – energy users in both the public and private sector.

Supermarkets, hotels, universities, water companies, banks, local authorities, state-funded schools and central government departments will all be in the scheme based on energy readings from their half-hourly meters in 2008. Building services specialists will have a key role to play in helping their FMs get their houses in order before they have to start buying carbon allowances.

Carbon footprint reality

Anyone failing to meet their legal energy reporting obligations will face fines of several thousand pounds and continued offenders could face prison. Even organisations just under the threshold – between 3,000 and 6,000 MWh - must calculate their carbon footprint and submit a report to the regulator to prove they are exempt. This means that far more than the approximately 5,000 organisations thought to fall into the CRC scheme will be involved in calculating – many for the first time – their carbon footprint.

Everyone will have to report annually, which means many more building operators will have to pick up the habit of monitoring and measuring energy use. Hopefully, whether you are in the CRC scheme or not, the action of calculating your carbon emissions and the price you are paying for wasted energy should be motivation enough to take action.

CRC participants will have their energy performance published in a league table at the end of each year, and those who consume more energy than the allowances they bought at the start of the year will either have to buy more or do something about cutting their energy consumption.

It is a big challenge and FMs will need to look at all of their energy consuming services to get a clear picture of where they stand. Most firms are expected to get back most of their initial investment in carbon allowances and, in the longer term, those who take the most ambitious steps to reduce their energy usage stand to make considerable amounts of money from the government’s ‘recycling’ payments to the best performers.

The Energy Bill, which is due to become law before the end of the current Parliament, also reflects the greater desire to tackle energy efficiency in existing buildings. It includes a provision for ‘smart meters’ that allow FMs to better monitor and measure energy consumption and to calculate the actual price being paid hour-by-hour.

Smart meters also open up the possibility of selling electricity generated in your building back to the National Grid. And the Bill includes provision for feed-in tariffs that will make this even more attractive by guaranteeing a better level of payment from utilities to all microgenerators.

This could be particularly good news for combined heat and power (CHP), which is proving increasingly popular for buildings with constant heat requirements like sheltered housing, fire stations, leisure centres and so on. All the time the CHP engine is running it is generating electricity for use on-site with any excess exported to the Grid.

Over two-thirds of centrally generated power is lost in waste heat from power stations and in transmission losses. This makes the argument for a wholesale switch to on-site microgeneration pretty persuasive. However, the losses from power generation are exacerbated by the fact that most of the buildings receiving the supply then proceed to waste a further 50 per cent because of poorly commissioned and maintained building services – so to get the best out of any low carbon solution, we must first fix the energy efficiency problem.

More support

A new Renewable Heat Incentive will also form part of the Energy Bill and this will create a financial support mechanism – a beefed up Renewables Obligation – where utilities will be expected to help end users with the cost of installing renewables to help reduce their carbon footprint.

Energy certificates for buildings are also gradually changing behaviour. A survey carried out by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers showed that many property managers now use the process of getting a certificate to make improvements to the running of the buildings.

Almost 30 per cent of clients questioned said they commissioned detailed surveys from the Energy Assessors, who carried out the survey for either an Energy Performance or Display Energy Certificate. 25 per cent asked for costings of their recommendations and 21 per cent said they would go on to ask for implementation.

It is understandable that in the early days of building energy labels most emphasis is on compliance, but the exercise in measuring and monitoring will also help FMs get to grips with what is happening in their buildings and the energy assessor's report gives them a great source of ‘free’ advice about how to make things better.

All of this activity around building energy consumption means there is a lot more pressure on FMs. However, the flip side is that there are huge financial gains to be made from reducing energy waste and so the FM's role is gaining more recognition as a potential source of vital cost savings during tough economic times. Arguably, the recession has done more for energy efficiency than any of the schemes, initiatives and laws brought in by the present government.

The more ‘glamorous’ side of building engineering has always been the design of new buildings, but today  it may be that the most meaningful side is the art of making those buildings perform better throughout their operational life.

Gareth Vaughan is the President of the Heating and Ventilating Contractors' Association and Managing Director of the ductwork contractor E. Poppleton & Son.
http://www.hvca.org.uk/