The Power of Energy Audits: Four Steps to Inform Your Facility’s Decarbonization Strategy
Energy audits are not just a tool for understanding your energy use—they are a gateway to achieving comprehensive sustainability and operational excellence.
THIS WEEK’S CONTRIBUTOR:
John Lerczak, CEM, LEED AP O+M, TRUE Advisor
Sustainability Performance Program Manager
APTIM | Environmental Compliance & Sustainability
John.Lerczak@APTIM.com
John has more than seven years of experience in developing, implementing, and evaluating sustainability initiatives and decarbonization strategies, plus assessing operational and capital projects for sustainability impacts and providing educational programming for stakeholders. Currently, John serves as the sustainability performance program manager, managing energy projects and building out decarbonization strategies for clients nationally.
The Power of Energy Audits: Four Steps to Inform Your Facility’s Decarbonization Strategy
How can your organization prepare for emerging energy regulations and get ahead of compliance with building performance standards? Energy audits, particularly using American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) standards, are an essential first step for effective action. These internationally recognized guidelines define best practices for energy efficiency, sustainability, and building performance.
Energy audits are not just a tool for understanding your energy use—they are a gateway to achieving comprehensive sustainability and operational excellence. They go beyond identifying inefficiencies by offering actionable insights that your facility can use to integrate renewable energy solutions, ensure compliance with evolving regulations, and move closer to net-zero targets.
What is an Energy Audit?
Energy audits are used to assess the efficiency of current operations and identify energy-saving opportunities at the facility-level. By analyzing high-leverage cost and energy savings measures, they serve as a key decision maker for building owners looking to prioritize energy efficiency or optimization upgrades.
Audits can also inform long-term energy strategies, which incorporate higher investment decarbonization measures, such as renewable energy projects, by ensuring energy consumption is sufficiently optimized before making substantial capital expenditures to offset or accommodate current demand.
How to Get Started on Your Energy Audit
The number one priority for your facility’s decarbonization is to optimize its energy efficiency; APTIM is here to help you through that journey with energy auditing. Here is how it works:
- Establish a baseline. We start with collecting utility data of your facility to measure energy consumption trends and outliers, which provides a starting point for developing targets and goals. Establishing a baseline can also help you identify where you stand against your peers. Additionally, developing baselines can help you track against overall performance.
- Identify low-hanging fruit. After the utility data has been collected and analyzed, our experts will begin to assess current operations through an on-site audit. The team will identify energy savings opportunities that are low-cost with a high return on investment. From there, we will work with you to build out longer-term, higher-investment opportunities based on your organization’s priorities.
- Begin implementing energy efficiency upgrades. Starting out with these projects can result in cost savings that can be used to fund other sustainability or company initiatives.
- Reduce energy consumption. Our team also considers factors beyond the facility-level, such as how your facility can reduce demand to lessen the strain on the grid. This may open additional opportunities to make investments in sustainable infrastructure.
Impacts of Your Energy Audit
With the help of advanced technologies like energy management systems and data analytics, energy audits have become even more valuable. These tools enable real-time monitoring and predictive analysis, allowing you to be proactive in addressing energy challenges. They can also uncover opportunities for smarter resource allocation and innovation, ensuring long-term benefits for your organization and the environment.
By connecting energy audits with broader sustainability goals, such as decarbonization and operational resilience, you can create an efficient roadmap for the future. Not only does this approach reduce energy costs, but it also strengthens your reputation as a sustainable leader in its industry. Plus, you may save money by identifying inefficiencies, reducing energy consumption, and uncovering cost-saving opportunities such as rebates, tax benefits, and high-return investments.
Your Partner for Energy Audits (and an Energized Future!)
Energy efficiency, optimization, and decarbonization are long-term goals that cannot be achieved overnight—and they require careful considerations for investment at multiple levels of your organization. With active and emerging regulations coming online, in addition to any voluntary targets or goals your organization may have set, today is the time to get started.
APTIM’s team of energy and sustainability experts takes a holistic approach to help each of our clients meet their goals and accelerate their sustainability journey. We follow ASHRAE standards to provide a comprehensive and consistent approach to provide high-quality results. Get started with an energy audit to assess your current operations and inform how to best manage your energy consumption by contacting me today at John.Lerczak@APTIM.com.
APTIM. In Pursuit of Better.