Measure Energy Better to Manage Energy Better
global warming
and climate change have become issues
that require our immediate action
we know that we have to use more
renewable energy and even though
technological advancements have
made renewables slightly less expensive
there are still various financial and
geographical barriers that prevent
us from using renewables at large scale
but that said we now have access to a
whole lot of
more energy efficient machines than we
did in the past so
that should technically keep us good in
our fight against
climate change right yes but sometimes
energy efficiency can be a paradox
usually when it becomes
cheaper to use a commodity we are likely
to use it more often
for instance if our cars become more
efficient at burning fuel
we are or in other words if it becomes
cheaper to drive
we are likely to either make more trips
or
make longer trips or both and if we keep
doing that
there comes a point where we would have
consumed more fossil fuel than we did in
the past
over a given amount of time now doesn’t
that actually beat the purpose of
fighting climate change right but just
because
we do not have access to renewable
energy
at the price that we want it doesn’t
mean that there’s nothing else we can do
up until that point
what we can do is to strive
towards reducing our dependence on
non-renewable energy
and one of the starting things that we
need to do
to reduce our dependence is to simply
measure our energy consumption
on a regular basis because as the old
saying goes
what gets measured gets managed right
when i started working as an energy
engineer at my university
i was a part of an energy conservation
project it was actually a competition
and we know that uh sometimes
competitions
can be great motivators to uh to to
doing great things
right this competition was not very
different from that
the idea was simple measure
the energy people consume and convey it
to the people
but make it fun and make it competitive
at my university we measure the energy
consumed by each building
throughout the year and on my campus
students live in buildings that we call
residence halls
in 2018 we picked a four week period
and we calculated the total energy
consumed by each residence hall
during that period this became our
energy baseline
and then in 2019 in the same four week
period
we challenged the residents of each of
these buildings or the students that
lived in these residence halls
to consume less energy than they did in
the previous year
that’s it that was the gist of uh the
entire competition
and the building that had the highest
reduction
uh won the competition the students that
lived
in the the building that won this
competition got prizes
related to sustainability um and i can
tell that without
getting into a whole lot of maths and
formulas and conversion
in just four weeks this project this
competition had a
massive positive impact
and it was fun because students kind of
got involved in the
the whole competition they got engaged
uh in the dialogue about climate change
and energy conservation
um on the other side we knew uh
how much energy each building saved we
knew how many students lived in each
building so therefore we were able to
calculate
the savings that each student was
responsible for on an average
and then we were able to also convey the
broader impact
that this competition had in terms of
carbon emissions greenhouse gases etc
etc
these competitions are not
anything new they’ve been done in the
past but my concern
is that they’re not done enough they’re
not done
often but the thing is that
competitions like these should be easily
replicatable
right that said i do
understand and recognize that uh
the competition that we had was based on
the fact that people live on campus and
maybe
um on your college campus students don’t
live
on site so does that mean that this
competition cannot be replicated to your
college
no that’s that’s not the case
maybe in in your college uh
buildings are occupied by different
departments in which case this
competition could be a
an interdepartmental competition when
departments
one two and three compete against each
other and
they also compete against departments x
y and z
um or maybe this could be a first-year
students versus second year students and
so on and so forth i think
there are various ways to get creative
with this competition to apply it to
your specific university and your
specific
college sometimes
starting a competition could seem
daunting and that’s fine
in which case the least we could do is
install one energy meter per building
and
convey the energy consumed to the
students
some awareness is better than none right
and it’s very important to get students
involved because
students of the present are going to be
leaders and
policy makers and decision decision
makers
in the future and therefore it’s very
important
to get students involved in a dialogue
surrounding climate change
and energy conservation now maybe you’re
not a student
what do you do then
that’s a good thing that’s a good
question to ask um
this could in fact be taken to a next
level
to a next step and this competition
could actually be a community-wide event
let’s say that you live in an apartment
complex that has
i don’t know five blocks uh blocks a b c
d and e and let’s say that each block
has five houses
now in that case there’s no uh necessity
to even install
meters because um each house
already has an energy meter each house
already receives
uh a monthly bill with a little bit of
initiative
this could actually become a housing
complex energy conservation competition
whatever i want to call it right and in
fact um
a housing related competition could have
much more
uh savings than an educational
institution
could have in that short amount of time
um
i recognize that uh the climate crisis
that we have on hand
requires a whole lot of attention
requires a whole lot of effort
so if none of what i told you applies to
you the least
that you can do that i can do as an
individual is to compete against
myself you can compete against yourself
what we can do is look at our energy
bills and say this month i got this much
next month to the best of my abilities
i’m going to try
and consume less energy maybe it could
be on a monthly basis
on on an annual basis whatever the
period applies
uh to you so all it takes is to
just get started and we could start
small
it doesn’t have to be anything elaborate
it doesn’t have to be anything
big we just have to start small
and measure our energy consumption
and that could take us a long way and
and like i said remember
what gets measured gets managed thank
you