We’re Missing Opportunities in Energy Management
Energy consumption is getting a lot of attention these days, and for good reason. Utility bills keep climbing, sustainability mandates keep tightening, and everyone from the C-suite to the front desk wants to know what we’re doing about it. So we’re doing what we’re supposed to do—adjusting setpoints, installing LED fixtures with motion sensors, adding variable frequency drives to our pumps and fans. All good stuff. All proven to work.
But here’s what I’ve noticed: in our rush to implement the big, obvious solutions, we sometimes walk right past opportunities that are so simple they almost seem too easy. The kind of changes that make you think, “Wait, we weren’t already doing that?” These aren’t groundbreaking innovations. They’re just smart applications of technology we already have, focused on places we weren’t really thinking about.
Conference Rooms: The Energy Black Holes
Let me paint you a picture. Walk through your building right now and count how many conference rooms are empty. I’ll wait.
Now think about this: those empty rooms are being conditioned to occupied setpoints—probably 72 degrees, maybe 70 if your occupants like it cool—all day long. A typical conference room gets actual use for maybe three or four hours during an eight-hour workday. The rest of the time, we’re essentially air conditioning empty boxes. That’s a lot of wasted energy for spaces nobody’s using.
Here’s the fix, and it’s simpler than you might think: connect your room scheduling system to your HVAC controls. When someone books a conference room, the system automatically switches it from unoccupied mode to occupied mode thirty minutes before the meeting starts. That gives you enough time to bring the space to comfortable conditions. The meeting happens in perfect comfort. And when it’s over, the system goes back to unoccupied mode until the next booking.
The energy savings are substantial—we’re talking forty to sixty percent reduction in HVAC consumption for those spaces compared to keeping them conditioned all day. And nobody knows the difference because when they walk into their meeting, the room feels exactly the way they expect it to.
The Office That Nobody’s Sitting In
Now let’s talk about individual offices. How many people in your building are actually at their desks all day? Not many, I’d bet. They’re in meetings. They’re visiting other departments. They’re on job sites or traveling for business. But their offices? Still being heated and cooled as if they’re sitting there working.
This one bugged me for years before I finally did something about it. We integrated badge access with our HVAC controls. When someone badges into the building in the morning, their office starts conditioning. By the time they get their coffee and check their messages, the temperature is right where it should be. When they badge out at the end of the day or head out for an off-site meeting, the system knows to dial back.
The implementation was straightforward. The savings were immediate. And the complaints? Zero. Because from the occupant’s perspective, nothing changed. Their office is comfortable when they’re there. They just don’t know—or care—that it’s saving energy when they’re not.
Overhead Doors and the Great Outdoors
Let me tell you about a problem that drove me crazy at a previous facility. We had a warehouse with overhead doors that opened and closed constantly for deliveries and shipments. Makes sense—that’s what warehouses do. But we also had unit heaters running full-time during the winter to keep the space warm for the workers.
Every time those doors opened, those heaters were essentially trying to heat the entire parking lot. Pure waste. Expensive waste. And it happened dozens of times every day.
The solution cost us maybe two hundred dollars per door: position sensors that talked to the unit heater controls. Door opens, heaters shut off. Door closes, heaters come back on. That’s it. The payback on those sensors was less than six months, and they’ve been saving us money every winter since.
It’s one of those things that seems obvious in retrospect. Of course you shouldn’t run heaters when the door’s wide open. But until you actually implement the control to prevent it, that’s exactly what happens.
Control Is Everything
What ties all these examples together is control. Not better equipment. Not newer technology. Just smarter control of what we already have.
This is actually the best kind of energy efficiency because the capital requirements are low. You’re not replacing entire systems or ripping out equipment. You’re adding sensors and programming controls, which costs a fraction of what major equipment upgrades run. And if something doesn’t work quite right, you can adjust the programming. You’re not stuck with a decision you can’t change.
The other advantage—and this is critical—is that these control strategies don’t compromise comfort. They work around actual usage patterns instead of making assumptions about how buildings should operate. People only notice HVAC when it’s not working right. When it’s working right, it’s invisible. That’s what we’re aiming for: invisible efficiency.
Smarter Approaches to Lighting
Everyone talks about LED lighting like it’s the end of the conversation. And yes, LEDs use way less energy than what we had before. But the lamp technology is only part of the equation.
Where you put the light matters just as much as what kind of light it is. How you control it matters. What you’re actually trying to illuminate matters.
Take a warehouse with thirty-foot ceilings and rows of high-bay fixtures. The old approach lights everything uniformly during operating hours. A better approach zones the lighting based on how the space actually gets used, puts occupancy sensors on the aisles so you’re only lighting where people are working, and integrates daylight harvesting in areas with skylights or windows.
The energy difference between these two approaches can be seventy percent or more. And here’s the interesting part: the lighting usually works better with the smarter approach. You’re getting good light exactly where people need it instead of trying to light everything equally.
Office lighting works the same way. Use overhead fixtures for general ambient light at reasonable levels. Add task lighting at workstations for people who need more. Put occupancy sensors in so lights turn off when people aren’t there. Add daylight sensors near windows so you’re not running electric lights at full power when the sun’s doing half the work.
These strategies typically cut lighting energy by thirty to fifty percent compared to the traditional approach of lighting everything uniformly on a timer. And the workplace often feels better because you’ve got varied lighting levels that create visual interest instead of institutional uniformity.
What I’ve Seen Work
At my previous organization, we implemented a comprehensive HVAC control strategy across our portfolio. The focus was on occupancy-based operation, optimized scheduling, and intelligent setpoint management. We didn’t change the occupied setpoints—spaces stayed at the same comfortable temperatures they’d always been. We just stopped wasting energy when nobody was there.
Over twelve months, we reduced HVAC energy consumption by thirty-seven percent. That translated to more than six hundred thousand dollars in annual savings. Our implementation costs, including sensors, controls programming, and system integration, came to about one hundred eighty thousand dollars. We got our money back in less than four months.
The important part: comfort complaints didn’t increase. We tracked them carefully because that was the one thing that could sink the whole initiative. But the numbers stayed flat. People were just as comfortable—or just as likely to complain about being too hot or too cold—as they’d always been. The difference was invisible to them, which is exactly what we wanted.
This experience reinforced something I’d believed but hadn’t fully proven: the cheapest energy you can save is the energy you don’t use in the first place. Not using less energy to do necessary things, but not using energy at all for unnecessary things.
How the Small Stuff Adds Up
One of the best aspects of control-based energy efficiency is how it aggregates. Each individual measure might not seem like much. Sensors in conference rooms save a few dollars a month per room. Badge-based conditioning in offices saves a few dollars per office. Door sensors on unit heaters save a few dollars per door.
But multiply those small savings across an entire facility and the numbers get interesting fast.
Let’s say you’ve got a medium-sized office building: fifty conference rooms, two hundred individual offices, thirty overhead doors in your shipping and receiving area, and two hundred lighting zones. Put occupancy-based HVAC control in the conference rooms and you might save twelve thousand dollars annually. Add badge-based conditioning in the offices for another eighteen thousand. Put sensors on those overhead doors and save eight thousand more. Enhance your lighting controls and add twenty-five thousand in savings.
That’s sixty-three thousand dollars in annual savings from measures that might cost thirty-five thousand dollars total to implement. Seven-month payback, and then it keeps saving you money year after year.
Each piece on its own would be hard to justify. The conference room sensors alone would take several years to pay back. But as a package, the whole thing makes complete sense financially. And if you’ve got multiple buildings, you multiply those savings across your portfolio while benefiting from economies of scale in design and implementation.
Making It Actually Work
Control-based energy efficiency offers big benefits, but you need to do it right. A few things I’ve learned the hard way:
First, your building automation system needs to be up to the task. If you’re running on a system from fifteen years ago that barely has the capacity to handle what it’s already doing, adding complex control sequences isn’t going to go well. Sometimes you need to upgrade the infrastructure before you can implement the strategies.
Second, the control sequences need to be properly designed and thoroughly tested before you roll them out building-wide. Bad controls can create comfort problems, operational headaches, or even increase energy use if they cause systems to operate inefficiently. This isn’t a DIY project unless you really know what you’re doing. Work with experienced controls engineers or qualified building automation contractors who’ve done this before.
Third, communication matters. If someone walks into their office and it’s a bit warm because it was in unoccupied mode, they need to understand what’s happening and why. Without proper communication, you’ll generate complaints that undermine the whole program. A simple email explaining what you’re doing and why usually solves this problem before it starts.
Fourth, these systems need ongoing attention. Controls that work perfectly in September might need adjustment by December when weather patterns change. Usage patterns shift. Equipment ages. You need to monitor performance, trend the data, and make adjustments as needed. Set it and forget it doesn’t work.
Looking Past the Price Tag
Energy cost reduction drives most of these initiatives, and that’s fine. Money talks. But these strategies deliver other benefits that make them even more valuable.
Reduced energy consumption means lower greenhouse gas emissions. If your organization has sustainability commitments or reports carbon emissions publicly, these projects provide concrete proof of environmental action. They’re not greenwashing—they’re actual, measurable reductions.
Equipment lasts longer when it runs less. An HVAC unit operating twelve hours a day instead of sixteen hours a day accumulates less wear, needs less maintenance, and lasts longer before replacement. That extends equipment life and reduces lifecycle costs beyond just the energy savings.
Occupant satisfaction often improves with better environmental control. When lighting responds to needs, when temperatures adjust based on actual use, when systems operate intelligently instead of rigidly, the workplace feels more responsive. People notice that, even if they don’t fully understand what’s happening behind the scenes. And that can contribute to productivity, retention, and all those harder-to-measure benefits that matter more than the energy savings.
Where This Goes Next
Energy management isn’t going away as a priority. If anything, it’s going to intensify. Utility costs will keep rising. Grid constraints will get tighter. Climate commitments will get stricter. The organizations that handle this well will be the ones that look beyond just buying more efficient equipment.
The most effective approach combines the proven solutions—efficient equipment, optimized setpoints, variable speed drives—with intelligent controls that ensure we only use energy when and where it’s actually needed. This requires thinking systematically about how buildings actually operate versus how we assume they operate, and implementing targeted interventions that close those gaps.
The opportunities are sitting there. The technologies exist and work reliably. The financial returns are compelling. It’s not a question of whether to pursue control-based energy efficiency but rather how quickly we can get it implemented.
Every month we wait represents continued energy waste and missed savings we’ll never get back. That’s money that could be going toward other priorities or dropping straight to the bottom line.
The path to major energy reduction doesn’t always require massive capital investments or complete system replacements. Sometimes it requires sensors that cost pennies but deliver dollars in monthly savings. It requires intelligent control sequences that align energy use with actual needs. And it requires thinking about energy management not as a one-time project but as an ongoing process of optimization and improvement.
The facilities that take this approach seriously—that invest in control infrastructure, implement intelligent operating strategies, and continuously monitor and adjust their systems—will be the ones achieving thirty, forty, fifty percent reductions in energy consumption while maintaining or improving occupant comfort. Those are the results that matter to the CFO and the sustainability committee, and they’re achievable with what’s available to us right now.
We just need to stop walking past the simple opportunities while we’re chasing the complex ones.
