How important are energy savings are to a company’s bottom line? What are Canadian companies doing about it? A survey released by the Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance presented a snapshot of Canadian businesses with the goal of finding out attitudes and activities around energy conservation. The survey was fielded with two main groups; a general business sample and a ‘trade’ sample made of architecture and building firms.
Energy costs are tracked whether space is owned or rented and can have a significant impact on a company’s fortunes. This survey by the CEEA focussed on commercial buildings because buildings account for over 30% of global CO2 emissions and 40%of global energy use. Space heating, lighting, and space cooling represent close to half of commercial site energy consumption.
Key findings from the survey:
Not surprisingly, energy costs are a concern for most Canadian companies. The majority of companies want to make improvements in energy efficiency and correspondingly, architects and builders share this view. The top benefit of employing energy efficiency measures costs savings. Less of a driver, but still important is the benefit to the environment or a company’s environmental record. Canadian businesses are concerned and interested in energy efficiency but admit they are not doing all they can.
” The vast majority of the building sector agrees that energy usage of separate tenant areas in commercial buildings should be individually metered – 82% agree – 9% disagree.”
Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance Survey 2014: Canadian Business Attitudes on Energy Efficiency2014.
From the survey, the top tactics for improving energy efficiency are replacing lighting, equipment, and renovation. Other popular activities are employee engagement, consumption review, and more efficient heat and lighting usage.
There are many ways businesses can conserve energy. Our experience in working with building operators is that an energy management system, based on the submetering of a building’s utilities, provides the intelligence that tenants and owners need to make positive changes in utility consumption. It can help improve building performance through the conversion of usage data to reporting, either in real time or post event. This reporting provides building operators and tenants actionable insights that lead to cost-savings and energy conservation.
QMC Metering Solutions helps building owners and tenants across Canada conserve utilities and save money through intelligent submetering solutions.