Unrealized potential

An eco machine at the omega center for sustainable living.

The smartening up of the electrical grid could be the biggest chance for profit, energy savings and greenhouse gas emissions reductions the green building industry has ever seen … but it’s an opportunity that may be missed. Right now, the smart grid market is mostly focused on helping utilities better manage the supply and demand of energy. The majority of the smart grid pilots completed to date work something like this: The utilities install smart meters in commercial buildings and homes, keep track of how and when energy is used and either control the amount of energy going to customers during peak load times or give customers the option of powering down during peak times in order to save money.

One might assume a high-performing house or building would fare well in such a scenario, and theoretically that should be the case, but the link between green building and the smart grid is not quite there yet. “The sad truth is that many green buildings today are neither highly efficient nor particularly intelligent,” Paul Ehrlich said at the 2008 Green Intelligent Buildings Conference in Baltimore.

That’s not to say that there’s no hope for a future in which intelligent green buildings connect to a smart grid. Commercial buildings in the United States have had building automation systems, or some version thereof, since oil prices spiked in the 1970s and building owners went looking for ways to lower their electricity bills. As was the case with so many other clean energy technologies launched during the 70s, interest in such systems declined along with oil prices. Now the interest is back, and this time it’s accompanied by a few extra catalysts: $4.5 billion in federal stimulus funds earmarked for energy efficiency and smart grid pilots; an established trend toward greener buildings; a sudden realization that energy efficient retrofits of existing buildings could result in dramatic greenhouse gas emissions reductions and energy savings; and a looming federal carbon cap that makes it that much more financially attractive for building owners to use less energy.

Still, government incentives and media buzz are not enough to turn promise into reality. In order for the build-out of the smart grid to translate to a boon in the green building industry and a dramatic reduction in the emissions and energy use of the built environment, people and buildings, not just the grid, need to get a little smarter.

Smart grid, dumb buildings
It’s entirely possible that the smart grid could get built out to hundreds and thousands of inefficient buildings that are not really able to respond to it, according to a recent white paper by Portland Energy Conservation Inc. (PECI), a nonprofit that designs and implements energy efficiency programs and research for utility companies and governmental agencies.

“People say the smart grid will transform buildings to be more energy efficient but no one talks about how that will happen,” says the paper’s author Hannah Friedman.