ABSTRACT
Previous research indicates there are additional (often unreported) benefits from saving energy. [1,2] This entry identifies these additional benefits and describes how to calculate their value. This entry is focused on additional benefits that occur as a result of classic energy conservation techniques—primarily turning off equipment when not needed or by optimizing equipment to reduce wasteful losses. These are actions that usually do not require a capital investment. Additional research would be required to include energy efficiency measures that require capital investments, which do save energy, but may require the systems to be “on” to save energy. Additional examples of such projects include installing more efficient equipment such as new chillers, different light sources, or any measure that saves energy not through demand-side reductions. These CORE Benefits have also been labeled as Secret Benefits as well as other acronyms such as MAC, which means Maintenance, Administrative and Capital Benefits. In addition, we found that a high percentage of facility managers experienced some of these benefits. For example, in a recent survey, 92% of facility managers experienced reduced maintenance material costs as a result of energy conservation (primarily because lights, filters, and other equipment lasted longer when operated less hours per year). Due to site-specific factors, not all facility managers will experience every benefit; however, a high percentage of respondents (92%, 71%, and 63%) did experience three of the six additional benefits in the survey. Because facility managers do receive some of these additional benefits, we developed two approaches to quantify their value. When applicable, these benefits should yield a direct and verifiable dollar savings a majority of the time. By a simple example, we calculated these benefits to be worth approximately 31% of additional value beyond the direct energy dollar savings (and that was only applying half of the possible benefits).
