Carbon emission reduction and energy efficiency

Seminars, entitled "A Sustainable Solution to Rising Carbon Emissions" were attended by building owners, operators and facilities managers and sponsored by OCS Engineering.

With energy costs for buildings 60% higher than twelve months ago, a highly successful series of seminars across the UK was the platform for the launch of a multi-faceted approach to energy reduction including ICE, the Intelligent Control of Energy, an advanced technology which promises to slash energy costs and considerably reduce environmental impacts.

The five seminars, entitled "A Sustainable Solution to Rising Carbon Emissions" were held at locations from Glasgow to London, and attended by building owners, operators and facilities managers and sponsored by OCS Engineering, part of the GBP600 million OCS property support services group.

They demonstrated how the combined engineering skills of the OCS resource, linked to integrated energy management services from Evolve, and the new ICE technology promises a sustainable long-term reduction in energy impacts.

Announcing the success of the seminars, Richard Burl, managing director of OCS Engineering said, "ICE harnesses 21st century technologies which allow us to make a step change in the way we control energy in buildings".

"It delivers intelligent, interactive and automated responses to the micro changes which have a macro effect on building energy costs".

"When linked to the proven skills of our engineering team and the integrated energy services of Evolve, we believe we have a winning formula for future energy management".

Tim Schneider from Evolve presented the case for working in partnership to permanently reduce energy costs.

With 24 years experience in energy and energy-related businesses he stressed that now is the best time to take advantage of funding support from the UK's Carbon Trust to commission a thorough and professional audit of energy usage and resources in order to develop a long-term, sustainable energy solution that will typically save up to 2/3rds of a company's energy bill and pay back in 2 to 5 years.

This strategic approach is available through a joint OCS/Evolve 'customised energy solutions suite' involving consultancy, planning, delivery and performance and accountability monitoring.

ICE is being made available from OCS Engineering through a link with Lightwave Technologies whose founder and chief executive officer Nicholas McNulty also made a presentation.

Lightwave Technologies is a multi-disciplined team including artificial intelligence experts and neural network developers who have worked on ICE to produce a "real time" solution to building management.

It promises, according to Mr McNulty, savings between 10-15% of the energy consumption of a typical building".

"This is our conservative estimate," he said, "But given that there is now an urgent need to arrest the soaring levels of global energy and global warming emissions we believe our solution has the potential to reduce up to 30% of commercial energy consumption and 15% of CO2 emissions".

"I am delighted that OCS - a global property services group - has adopted our technology as part of their offering to major building operators, who are, of course, now required to comply with the L2 Building Regulations which came into force in April".

ICE sits above conventional building management systems (BMS).

It combines the latest advances in artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms to find "hidden relationships" between many previously unconnected or unpredictable variables within a building.

These include the relationships between room temperature and occupancy temperature expectations; existing external weather conditions; localised climate changes predicted by global meteorology intelligence; building heat-up and cool-down times and minute changes in operating conditions.

Other advantages of the ICE system include low cost installation; easy maintenance and upgrade paths to new software releases; ease of integration into existing systems; remote logging and control; advanced reporting and analytical tools.

Chief executive of the OCS group, Chris Cracknell said, "OCS engineering has brought together three critical elements of sustainable energy management - skilled engineers, specialist consultancy and advanced technology".

"This new package has vast potential not just for energy saving at a time when energy costs are soaring but, just as importantly, for reducing carbon emissions - our single most important global warming contributor.

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