TRANSFORMING HVAC THROUGH RETROFITTING

TRANSFORMING HVAC THROUGH RETROFITTING: HOW CAN IT HELP MEET CARBON EMISSIONS GOALS?

Michael Anderton, General Manager UK&I of HVAC Building Solutions at Johnson Controls, argues that retrofitting should be the key focus for HVAC.

When aiming to meet carbon efficiency goals and fight climate change, the importance of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is often disregarded. This is especially true when 40% of total UK carbon emissions come from the heating and cooling of buildings. Alongside this, the UK currently has a strong dependence on fossil fuel gas boilers for heating. Fortunately, times are starting to change.

By 2050, it’s expected 80% of our buildings will still be standing. The UK will need to make a rapid transition from gas to low carbon heating solutions to meet emissions targets. These challenges are quickly solved in new buildings, as under newly introduced regulations they will need to produce nearly a third less carbon than previously required.

The challenge isn’t getting new buildings to be more energy efficient; it’s about ensuring our current building systems are updated to work in the same way. But for most companies, each HVAC component is likely to remain in place for years – if not decades – before being replaced. HVAC systems have a long life expectancy of around 20 years and while newer technologies can help us move to a more energy efficient world, if somethings not broken, why would you fix it?

Building owners and facility managers (FMs) are conflicted between sustainability goals and operating expenses. As the energy crisis and rise of the cost of living continues to take precedence, short-term cuts on spending are likely to have a negative impact on any energy efficiency progress. Business leaders, owners, and FMs must come together to make the right choices that benefit the company, the planet, and the occupants of a building to ensure everyone is safe, happy, and healthy.

THE ’WHY’ AND ‘HOW’ OF ENERGY EFFICIENCY

To take the first step on any energy efficiency journey, we must first understand what energy is being used and how. With the ability to bring data from different sources throughout a building into a common platform, building owners and FMs can see where inefficiencies lie and make contextualised decisions based on the insights.

HVAC systems are complex, with lots of individual components needing to work together effectively to ensure reliable and energy efficient system performance. Just one component poorly designed, maintained or incorrectly controlled can have a negative impact on the overall system performance.

We now have an increased amount of accessible data from all types of building systems such as HVAC, security, fire, lighting, and IT. Each of these systems produces a huge amount of data and when used in combination with each other can make buildings safer, more comfortable, and more efficient. If we then connect all these areas with intelligent systems, you can make real-time, informed decisions to reduce emissions, improve on sustainability, and increase occupant comfort.

INVESTING IN POSITIVE SOLUTIONS

No matter which HVAC solutions a facilities manager chooses, it’s not a case of installing them and then waving goodbye. By implementing smart technologies, such as smart connected chillers, FMs can use predictive maintenance and monitoring tools, which use AI and automation to predict issues before they arise. This ensures equipment runs reliably and downtime can be minimised.

Investments into new HVAC solutions with smart tech means efficiency savings can be made throughout a building. Imagine a particular room, or entire floor is empty. Smart systems can monitor occupancy levels and adapt the heating accordingly, so nothing is wasted. Such a setup helps create huge savings – financially and environmentally – especially amid an energy crisis.

With the pandemic shining the spotlight on our health, ensuring employees have a safe and productive return to the office by improving indoor air quality (IAQ) was a much-needed wake up call. Not only do we want a healthy planet, but we also need healthy people. Some buildings in the UK have bad ventilation and overall IAQ. With mechanical ventilation in these environments, we can continue to improve IAQ, and keep the focus firmly on improving the air we breathe, even as the effects from the pandemic dissipate.

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When fresh air flows into a building, the spread of airborne viruses can be reduced, staff sick days can be lowered, and businesses can experience increased overall output – a win-win for all.

For businesses, governments, schools, and hospitals across the country, IAQ may soon become the number one priority – on par with sustainability initiatives. But this isn’t without its own challenges. Improving IAQ requires an increased consumption of energy as you’re pumping fresh air from the outside, indoors. There will be a fine balance to meet the goals of improving IAQ whilst keeping consumption low to meet both goals.

RETROFITTING: THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM

Although businesses are looking ahead and setting goals to meet carbon emissions targets, it doesn’t end there. There is an onus on the government to introduce new regulations and incentivise organisations to retrofit inefficient and out-of-date technology.

Modernising new buildings, fitting them with new technologies, improving energy efficiency, and creating more effective building management systems needs to be of utmost importance. By any means, this doesn’t equal demolishing inefficient structures and building new, improved buildings from scratch, which would be counterproductive in attempting to limit the effects of climate change. Instead, we need to renovate existing buildings and transform the way we think about how we’re using energy. To meet netzero and emissions goals that are slowly creeping upon us, we need to start taking action as soon as possible.