Today at the EE Forum, industrial and building companies spoke about their activities to lower energy consumption(Final) energy consumption includes all energy supplied to to final user and includes all sectors, such as households, industries, agriculture…. through efficiencyUsing less energy/electricity to perform the same function. Programs designed to use electricity more efficiently - doing the same with less. measures. Both Mitsubishi and Saint Gobain spoke about manufacturing initiatives and taking a “kaizen” approach to incremental improvements.

Mitsubishi has an “e-F@ctory” solution which is primarily based on intelligent comms & data collection throughout the IT systems (from shop floor to ERP). For Saint Gobain (world’s largest glass and gypsum board producer) energyThe ability to perform work, mainly kinetic, potential, thermal energy, but also in forms of gravitational, sound, elastic and electromagnetic energy. is between 20-40% of production costs. So, there are economic incentives to reduce energy consumption and the carbon reductions are a result of focusing on economics.

Property developers and building management companies like Hermes and Lend Lease are looking at a variety of methods to reduce the impact of the buildings sector, which represents 40% of a country’s carbon emissionsEmissions of greenhouse gases, greenhouse gas precursors, and aerosols associated with human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, land-use changes, livestock, fertilisation, etc. (IPCC) in the OECD. Currently property assessors don’t incorporate sustainability when conducting property valuations. However, in the longer term it’s expected that property will be “re-valued” based on a building’s environmental footprintThe carbon footprint is a measure of the exclusive total amount of carbon dioxide emissions that is directly and indirectly caused by an activity or is accumulated over the life stages of a product.. Valuations of “green” or low carbon buildings are expected to be 2-6% higher than traditional buildings.

Lend Lease provided an example of focusing on parking lot lighting and building management systems. Each building and its improvement path is different. It all starts with measurement and later evolves into targets and rating systems.