How are Building Energy Management Systems Promoting the Cause of Green Buildings

Highlights:

• Introduction
• Contribution of BEMS in reducing carbon footprint of residential and commercial spaces
• The growth of the sector in Asia-Pacific

As the awareness regarding environmental sustainability has increased on account of the rapid pace of climate change and global warming, the demands to reduce carbon emissions have been raised from all quarters. Governments around the world are partnering with private companies, think tanks, and civil societies to formulate policies for reducing emissions from different sectors of their national economies and achieve their net-zero targets.

Many Western countries have pledged to make their economy carbon neutral by 2050, China has set the target of 2060, while India and other countries have announced their aim of net zero by 2070. According to environmental experts and many other policymakers, for a country to achieve its target, achieving carbon neutrality in their respective construction sectors becomes imperative, as a major chunk of emissions are contributed by construction activities. Hence, techniques and technologies like building energy management systems have been developed that can drastically bring down the carbon footprint of the construction sector.

Building energy management systems for reducing the carbon footprint of residential and commercial buildings

Building energy management systems (BEMS) are a set of software and hardware tools that are deployed to reduce the energy needs and consumption of a specific building. In most of the urban areas and metropolitan cities today, there is a large congregation of commercial and residential buildings that continuously consume large amounts of energy. Furthermore, most of the power supplied to these buildings is generated using traditional sources of energy like coal and gas.

Though solar, hydroelectric, and wind energy are slowly gaining ground in many countries, their proportion is nowhere closer to that of conventional fossil fuels. Thus, an increase in energy consumption by these buildings indirectly results in the burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity. Urban planning studies have shown that installing building energy management systems helps in controlling and reducing around 84% of the total energy consumption needs.

At the same time, BEMS ensures that HVAC systems and other such equipment used in residential or commercial spaces are utilized optimally. Another important advantage of building energy management systems is that they help in cutting down costs associated with lighting, heating, and cooling. These systems have access to the occupants’ usage patterns of HVAC systems which aids them in controlling their performance and working. For instance, in March 2023, ABB launched the ABB Ability™ Building Analyzer, a smart building management tool that tracks building data including occupancy equipment runtime, temperature, climatic conditions, etc., to control the various types of HVAC systems installed in the building.

The rapid pace of urbanization: Asia-Pacific to dominate the industry in the near future

The developing economies in Asia-Pacific such as India, China, Japan, and South Korea have witnessed the highest growth in terms of urbanization and industrialization in the past few decades, especially since the start of globalization. As a result, the infrastructure development in these countries has happened at a stunning pace. New urban centers have been established within a matter of years and migration to these cities has taken place at an exponential rate. Due to these factors, the construction sectors in these countries are some of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Thus, in recent times, there has been a growing demand to install building energy management systems in residential and commercial spaces to curb carbon emissions and promote green buildings.

Furthermore, the integration of advanced technologies such as AI, cloud computing, IoT, etc., in BEMS is expected to open new avenues of growth in the building energy management systems industry. In June 2022, Siemens, a multinational technology company, announced the launch of Building X, an open AI-powered suite for green buildings. This AI-enabled, fully cloud-based system helps in creating a network through which various data points can be pooled together on a single platform. All major operations related to controlling energy usage, building management, and cyber security can be regulated through this platform.

To sum it up, the growing concerns related to carbon emissions caused by modern residential and commercial buildings have led to an increased demand for building energy management systems. The integration of several emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and cloud computing is anticipated to create favorable conditions for growth in the coming period.

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