Meet Sustainability Targets By Lowering Energy Demand: Rules of Supply and Demand
During the 1970s energy crisis, when the price of crude oil jumped 300%, the public became acutely aware of the need to reduce energy consumption. This was successfully achieved through price controls, gasoline rationing and mandating a national speed limit. These and other measures successfully exploited the simple law of supply & demand—if demand for a product changes inversely to its price, all else being equal, then lowering demand could bring down prices.
Past Economic Lessons Can Improve Sustainability Today
The powerful impact of demand reduction can be applied today to help companies achieve their sustainability goals.Unfortunately, today’s business culture promotes the opposite— we now have an increased energy supply from alternative means such as solar and wind, and although they are widely seen as the primary way to reduce CO2 emissions, we have not reduced consumption, in fact we have increased consumption.In terms of energy demand, the business world we live in today is dramatically different than just a few years ago. The AI revolution has unleashed a seemingly never-ending demand for energy. For example, the five-to-six-month training time of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, the heart of ChatGPT, consumes roughly 7,200 MWh, or enough to power 600 U.S. households for one year. Extrapolating that microcosm to a national level, our current trajectory is not sustainable.
Lower Energy Demand Can Have A Powerful Effect
Until now, lower CO2 emissions have largely been ignored as a lever to reduce energy demand. But when applied to business buildings—which contribute nearly 40% of the world’s CO2 emissions—reducing operating costs and making a positive impact on society. Global demand for energy needs to be reduced if we are ever to meet our global climate goals.In a World Economic Forum (WEF) article, Sara Vad Sørensen, the head of analytics, group communication and sustainability at Danfoss, writes, “The solution is right in front of us: the greenest energy is the energy we don’t use.” She calculates that through a push for energy efficiency, “...we can close the gap between promises and action and reduce global emissions by an additional 5 gigatonnes per year by 2030—this is about one-third of the reductions needed to meet net zero.”Vad Sørensen also observes that "[I]n buildings—both commercial and residential—vast amounts of energy is wasted every day because simple and relatively low-cost measures to monitor and control the energy used are not in place. We have the technologies to eliminate this waste; now we need the action.”
DTG Partners With CU Boulder Sustainability Strategy
[embed]https://youtu.be/Sk529IgbaYc?si=1y-wJvfswIGQbR8y[/embed]CU Boulder is finding new ways to make progress towards its sustainability goals and their partnership with DTG is furthering the University’s strategy.
Building A Successful Energy Reduction Strategy
Energy waste-reduction solutions include numerous new smart building technologies and tools. Leveraging wireless Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, sensor-enabled lighting, and motion, temperature and power monitoring capabilities can enable an adaptive cycle of dynamic business intelligence. Smart building capabilities can be deployed in any type of commercial space, delivering benefits including:
- Up to a 90% reduction in energy consumption through smart lighting and temperature controls.
- Space reductions of an average of 15%, as utilization is better understood and optimized.
- A significant reduction in overall carbon footprint as smart building technologies are scaled across floors and buildings. In aggregate, smart building technologies have enabled millions of tons of CO2 emissions to be avoided.
Demand reduction is one of the most effective paths to meet our self-imposed goals. Today’s data-rich buildings put myriad benefits of demand reduction within easy reach. With 21st-century supply-side boosts incapable of keeping pace with skyrocketing demand for electricity, lower demand can deliver the best results for companies and society.