Building owners turn to tech during cost-of-energy and enviro crises

COMMENT We are all well versed in the pressures faced by owners to improve the eco credentials of their buildings. Not only does the law require ever tighter standards to protect the environment and slow climate change – quite rightly – but employees, hotel guests and students alike also continue to demand that the sustainability of the buildings they use and occupy be improved.  Thankfully, it is no longer true that giving attention to the sustainability credentials of a building only means an increase in costs. Smart investments to reduce a property’s environmental footprint can also be cost-effective for building owners. Let’s take the example of a trio of UK tech firms, each addressing usage in gas, water and electricity. EcoSync, founded by Oxford University engineers, provides building managers with control over the heating of rooms on an individual basis, considering different occupancy levels and needs. It also allows building users to adjust temperatures via QR codes available for each room. Initially focusing on education buildings, the energy management tech start-up is now expanding into new sectors, bringing its benefits to buildings such as offices and hotels. Before setting out to develop their tech, the founders had calculated that 70% of commercial building spaces are still heated when empty, and that 40% of energy used to heat such buildings is wasted. Its solution redefines energy efficiency standards, reduces waste and generates significant savings of up to 40%. Sophisticated learning Cambridge-based InferSens is a sensor technology company, which delivers sophisticated deep learning, on device, at extremely low power. It enables accurate, real-time monitoring on multi-year battery-powered devices in areas that were previously hard or impossible to address. This transformative technology significantly reduces the volume of data being transmitted, addressing the challenges of data fidelity, privacy, latency and energy consumption. The easy, clip-on installation of the ultra-low power sensors allows for cost-effective, wide-scale deployment across a range of sectors within the built environment and beyond. Initially targeting the regulation-driven legionella risk management market, the clip-on InferSens flow sensors monitor the movement and temperature of in-pipe water, helping property owners and operators to monitor the risks of legionella within their water systems, reducing the need for environmentally unsustainable practices of manual testing and flushing of outlets. This saves water, energy and money, while reducing the unnecessary generation of CO2. Cumulative effect Reading-headquartered Measurable.energy is another company that is making buildings more energy efficient, creating savings on electricity bills and emissions by focusing on small power waste. Measurable.energy produces unique smart power sockets which incorporate machine learning to reduce energy use and cost. The power sockets automatically identify devices plugged into them and monitor their energy use.  Using this real-time information, the sockets can turn devices on or off to avoid wasted energy. Measurable.energy’s smart sockets, essentially tiny computers, tell us about the electricity that we use.  When the smart socket’s lighting is red, for example, energy is being used mostly from fossil fuels.  But when the light turns green, it is supplying mostly renewable energy. This directly changes people’s habits; instead of plugging something in that a user does not immediately need, they can wait until the energy supply is greener. The sockets can also turn off computer monitors, vending machines or even fridges in the middle of the night, saving small amounts of energy each and every day. This adds up to significant savings and a payback of around one to two years at today’s power prices. Tech start-ups the world over are experimenting with, and perfecting, products that can make our buildings more sustainable and which can also help us to save on energy and utility bills. Many of these leading cleantech businesses are based in the UK, and EcoSync, InferSens, and Measurable.energy find themselves in good company. Their money and carbon-saving solutions should be incorporated into buildings everywhere, not only through regulatory and financial pressures, but also simply because it is the right thing to do. Edward Rowlandson is group managing director of RO Group