It appears the biggest problem is trying to get everyone involved in energy saving. Here is a typical example;

When a new building is designed and built it is now a legal requirement to make it energy efficient, this is covered in Part L. The problem occurs when the building starts to be used. The designer has little say in how the building gets set up and used. More often than not this does not tie in with the design, so the real run cost is much higher than the predicted cost. Of course, when this happens everyone shrugs there shoulders and says the end user isn’t using the building correctly.

A key problem is that many installers view commissioning as the end of their responsibility for the kit. It is very common for the commissioning engineer to go to site and set up the kit how they want it without any consultation with the designer or the people who will be using the building. This is not a problem with the engineer but one of communication.

The end result is a wonderful system which the end user hates and tampers with reducing its operational efficiency. So how do we solve this?

When a new building is designed and built, the contract cost should include the supply of the energy for all the services for the first three years.

Let's imagine the scenario; an efficient aircon system is installed along with all the other services. If the installer had to pay the run cost for the first 3 years as part of the installation fee it would be in the installers interest to make sure it was properly maintained and set up to be very efficient. The same would be true of everyone supplying any services. The end user would get a supremely efficient system operating perfectly. What’s more it would encourage the installer to push the designers to spec more and more efficient kit as in the long run the contractor would make more money.

In the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard “make it so”.