Smart measuring

Sarah Alsbury, RSPB Environmental Management manager

Buildings, or more accurately what goes on inside them, are responsible globally for close to half of human produced greenhouse gas emissions.  Although buildings could be seen as half the problem we should not feel disheartened, as there are many readily available solutions for quickly reducing emissions from buildings. Cost effective measures include heating controls, insulation, efficient lighting and appliances that implemented would reduce emissions from buildings by 40% and that is before switching to clean energy sources. 

Climate change is already affecting birds and other wildlife in the UK and the Climate Change Act has legislative targets for reducing carbon pollution.  So the RSPB has adopted an equivalent target for our own emissions – a 30% reduction between 2010 and 2020. Energy conservation, alongside renewables, is essential  for us to achieve this target – and it’s the most cost-effective measure. We are keen to improve our understanding of how our buildings are working and our monitoring of energy consumption. As with habitat management, good monitoring data underpins successful energy conservation.  

Pilio, a new spinout company from the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, is helping us understand the energy consumption patterns of our buildings. This knowledge makes it easier to identify energy saving opportunities, to evaluate the success of energy saving actions we take and to monitor our progress in reducing carbon emissions. Pilio prepared an energy audit report of our Lodge headquarters, using half-hourly data from smart  meters,  sent digitally, to compile  a high-resolution profile of our buildings’ energy use. Pilio’s analysis identified some high electricity loads and patterns, which we are now investigating. We are installing smart meters at our larger sites so that we can extend this process.

We’ve also been trialling a Peer Group account in sMeasure (www.smeasure.com), Pilio’s online building energy management software. This lets us bring together energy consumption data across all the sites, comparing and ranking the energy efficiency of our buildings. sMeasure shows us how each building is performing against the weather conditions, enabling us to quickly spot if heating controls are well set or if there might be problems with a boiler. The Pilio team prepared a review on the results from two buildings to demonstrate how we can use the information coming through sMeasure to improve our energy management.

We are at the beginning of a journey to understand and manage the energy consumed across our nature reserve and office buildings. It is a process of learning and doing, which we want to share with our members, visitors and staff to encourage them to take energy saving steps at home. These combined efforts to reduce the emissions from our buildings will contribute towards the energy transformation necessary for environmental protection.

And it'd be great to hear from others who are also working to make their buildings greener