Increasingly large corporations are taking a strong look at their energy use, not just to be greener, but to drive down energy expenses. The rising cost of energy has created the incentive to look for greater efficiency. Harnessing real-time sensors in your facility or campus can provide dramatic cost savings that quickly repay this investment.

The next wave of wireless IP-addressable temperature and control sensors are making a big impact. With these wireless devices, there’s very little installation hassle or cost. The system is designed, sensors are put in place, and immediately an organization has a much better understanding of their facility’s energy use.

On the system side, the centralized analysis tools reveal energy baselines so that you can begin to make adjustments in your energy use. The ability to view and control energy use reveals a whole new level of facility maintenance opportunities. For instance, the benefits of switching to compact fluorescent lighting becomes quickly apparent with viewable energy savings.

Patterns of energy use over time also become apparent. Because energy costs rise based on peak demands, the astute facility manager can discern these patterns and adjust demands by staggering the use of high-energy appliances, and dramatically draw down their energy bills. Instead of an early-morning ramp up of all systems, perhaps there are opportunities to run things at night or to run machines at slower speeds and volumes over longer periods of time.

The cost savings can easily equal 15 percent of a yearly utility bill. While that cost savings may not sound like much in the context of a home owner, consider the energy costs of such facilities as a complex manufacturing plant, a hotel, or a large retail outlet. A 15-percent savings in those contexts could easily measure in the millions of dollars.

These sensors and energy analytics tools should usher in a whole new business model for facility maintenance. Instead of just incentive pay tied to facility upkeep measures, facility managers should be given incentives for how efficiently they run their facility. Given the right incentives, owner/operators may be quite pleasantly surprised by how efficiently their operations can run.

Cities are beginning to promote the use of green roofs as part of their planning ordinances, because rooftop plantings play multiple roles in making a city more environmentally friendly. A green roof can reduce the energy needs of the individual building while also reducing the overall impact of buildings on the heat island effect of cities.

The insulating properties of soil and plants adds considerable energy savings that is beneficial in both hot and cold seasons. During hotter summer months the soil and plant layers reflect and absorb the suns rays with less intensity than the traditional black roof, driving down the air temperature. Reducing the amount of black roof surface helps mitigate the heat island effect of paved city cores, which can be as much as four degrees hotter than surrounding areas. A study by Environment Canada found a 26 percent reduction in both cooling needs and winter heat loss.

A green roof’s ability to absorb water improves stormwater management. Instead of a deluge of water off the roof and into drains, the roof absorbs a good portion of precipitation, which has implications for less erosion and better water quality. The absorption of water, and subsequent slow release, serves to filter the water, meaning far less energy is needed to purify water in order to make it potable.

Green roofs add to the biodiversity of plant life in a city and they add habitat for insects and birds. The green roof can become a needed sanctuary along the migration path of birds that are faced with a shortage of natural habitat.

Given the stability of the temperature of soil and plants, green roofs can last two or three times longer than traditional roofs that are made of membranes that deteriorate due to the dramatic fluctuation in temperature.

Lastly, green roofs provide an aesthetic and psychological benefit by adding to the green spaces in a city.

The owners of New York’s Empire State Building are applying advanced technologies to retrofit the building to reduce the carbon footprint and save considerable money due to enhanced energy efficiency. The cost of adding enhanced energy efficiency to a $500 million retrofit project adds $20 million, but the annual projected savings are $4 million.

Read more in this story in the New York Times.