I was recently reading through my weekly ASHRAE HVAC&R Industry eNewsletter and came across an article titled “Efficiency Standards Save Consumers, Businesses more than $1.1 Trillion.” This is a popular topic and one that I strongly believe in. The article talks about efficiency in equipment we use every day and some of the associated savings. According to the article, it is estimated that a typical household can save $10k from 2010 to 2025 by switching over to new, higher efficiency appliances. This dollar savings would be multiplied if you applied it to a larger facility.

The article describes residential appliances, but equipment efficiency also applies (probably more so) to mechanical equipment in large facilities. In order to achieve energy savings in a large facility with a complicated design process, the engineer needs to keep up to date on new building technologies such as building automation computer controls, heat recovery, heating, cooling, and air distribution methods. The engineering team needs to take the extra time to incorporate some of these innovative ideas into the project. I believe that energy efficiency is more important than renewable energy because after all, the cheapest energy is the energy you never need to produce. Click the link below to see the original article.

Tyson McFall, EIT

www.aceee.org/press/2012/03/efficiency-standards-save-consumers-