We need to make our "dumb" buildings smarter

What can be done about reducing emissions from buildings?

According to the International Energy Agency, in 2021 about 8% of global energy-related and process-related CO₂ emissions originated from the use of fossil fuels in buildings. Another 19% stemmed from generating electricity and heat for buildings. Add another 6% related to the manufacture of cement, steel and aluminum used to build the buildings. Altogether buildings directly and indirectly contribute a third of all global emissions.

The challenge of course is what to do with all the existing buildings. You can’t just knock them down and start. We’ve previously discussed the advancements in cement and steel production. That will help address the 6%. The hope is the remaining 27% can be reduced by making older buildings smarter.

The concept of smart buildings is gaining traction and new approaches like automated systems optimizations (ASOs), energy as a service (EaaS), and independent data layers (IDL) are being deployed more and more frequently. All remain in the early stages, but all will become increasingly more commonplace over the next decade.

Look for future videos on these and other approaches to maximize building energy efficiencies.

Image by macrovector on Freepik