Microsoft: how cloud computing can make buildings more efficient

Grazed from TechFlash.  Author:  Greg Lamm.

Cloud computing, analytics software and other IT technologies can help dramatically lower the energy costs in buildings, which account for about 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

That’s the conclusion of a Microsoft pilot program looking at ways to us technology to dramatically cut building energy costs for far less than it would cost to retrofit buildings…

The results — detailed in a white paper (pdf, 24 pages) — come at a time when companies are looking to reduce energy costs with green building initiatives. The Microsoft study also comes at a time when an activist investor group is again pushing Microsoft to established a Board Committee on Environmental Sustainability, a move Microsoft says is not necessary since the company says it already is heavily committed to environmental sustainability issues.

Microsoft focused on its sprawling Redmond campus to conduct the study. Microsoft said investment in smart building solution can pay for itself in less than eighteen months by reducing energy costs.

Microsoft’s corporate campus is immense: 118 buildings with nearly 15 million square feet of office space. The campus on average uses 2 million kWh of energy and produces about 280,000 metric tons of carbon emissions a year.

For the pilot study, Microsoft tested smart building management solutions across 2.6 million square feet. Microsoft’s Azure Connect, a cloud-based data transfer service, was part of the pilot project.

Microsoft said cloud computing can help building managers process massive volumes of data taking in outside temperature, cloud cover, and wind conditions to “refine heating, air conditioning and lighting patterns.”

In touting analytcs software, the study says it can be used to find sources of waste in heating, ventilation and air conditioning and also better monitor heating and cooling and lighting so it is not needlessly used during times where buildings are not occupied.

In a blog post, Josh Henretig, who is in charge of Microsoft’s global environmental sustainability strategy, said “smarter building” savings can reached by investing less than 10 percent of annual energy expenditure, with costs recouped in less than 18 months:

What we learned from the pilot program is that we at Microsoft (and by extension, many organizations with real estate portfolios) don’t need to undertake capital-intensive retrofits to cut building energy costs. Instead, we saw buildings become dramatically more efficient by introducing software to harness and utilize the building systems already in use. By integrating powerful analytics that add intelligence to existing building infrastructure, our buildings got smarter, more efficient and less costly to operate.

There is a significant opportunity to use software to better manage energy use. Buildings are the largest contributor to global carbon emissions, accounting for about 40 percent of the overall footprint. Commercial buildings alone account for close to 20 percent, about half of the total. For many organizations, commercial buildings are often one of their single greatest operational expenses.

The pilot program was done in collaboration with Accenture and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in a white paper being published today at GreenBuild in Toronto.