Making Finland a model for energy efficiency
The energy industry has traditionally been producer oriented and hence the renowned Sitra’s research regarding energy technologies impact on society was a delightful read (T&T 15.5.2015).
According to Sitra, both new possibilities from new technology innovations as well as energy efficiency improvements in the installed building base, is a significant development area with tremendous savings opportunities. Our energy usage is naturally based on the principle that we use the consumed energy as efficiently as possibly. This optimal efficiency point is determined by energy costs and the savings calculations model used. Because the easiest understood and most commonly used calculation model in facility management today is payback time, it is obvious that a many profitable investments will not pass through the traditional facility manager’s gate. Fortunately a more enlightened model and view is slowly gaining foothold and understanding, life-cycle investment calculations with internal rate of return are becoming more common. Energy efficiency investment in facilities are by their nature long term and typically have long effective life time. Since interest rate today are at rock bottom, finding financing for these type of investments should pose no problem.
The energy consumption of our buildings in Finland are critical and significant even from national economy viewpoint. Most of the buildings we use today, will still be around and in use after 30 years. The long terms energy price trend is increasing steadily, it should be obvious that the primary goal of energy politics for buildings would be to actively, via continuous energy management, identify critical and energy wasteful buildings and realize profitable energy savings investments based on life cycle calculation. By doing so, we start positive feedback savings trend, which have healthy impact both on private household economies as well as national economy.
Our company has developed a smart cloud based service for facility energy management, TEKES has supported the development. TEKES has also understood and agreed with our vision, that by combining a modern cloud service with robust domestic engineering knowledge and energy efficient products and solutions, process based management principles (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 50001) and life cycle based investment profitability calculations, it is is possible to create an intelligent solution that automates the energy management process. With this model we can easily identify buildings that based on their energy consumption should be improved. With our process we also identify the measures that improve energy efficiency in the most profitable manner based on investment life-cycle analysis, we do this in a given building or even over the entire portfolio of buildings.
What is stopping us from making Finland a model country for energy efficiency?
The energy savings potential in the installed building base in Finland, considering the state of current energy efficiency technologies, is about 30%. Putting this in relation to all the energy used by our buildings, this efficiency improvement would save a staggering 8.5 billion euro annually. This kind of saving is like a structural reform that pays dividends every year. By calculating the return on investments correctly, the possibilities are impressive.
Jarmo Kontro CEO Eneron Oy
