Building Commissioning – Saving Energy in Buildings – Green Elevators aka the Stairs
Posted by Norman Fong
Work in a Commercial building and want to help save energy? Ask the landlords if they have done Building Commissioning. Building Commissioning is the art and science of maximizing the energy efficiency of commercial buildings. The Lawrence Berkeley Lab has a paper describing this.
The author Evan Mills states: “Roughly 40 percent of all humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions from energy come from the building sector,” Mills said. “I would rank it one of the very first, if not the first thing to do.” Billions can be saved, new jobs created, and all using existing technologies.
Green Elevators aka the Stairs
photo credit: veganstraightedge
We’ve noticed that most office buildings have only allow elevators access and at best allow you to use the stairs to walk down. Must be a security issue, but the world could save energy and burn fat by allowing/forcing users to take the stairs. Elevators use a lot of power.
Buildings should have a use the stairs day to help prod users in the right direction.
Greenquest – Personal Energy Site
Greenquest is a new FREE personal energy information website that combines information on energy spending, weather data, greenhouse gas emissions and energy use for your building. Learn how your energy use is affecting the environment. Anticipate future energy use and cost thru weather data. See how you compare with your neighbors. Measure the effects of energy projects like new windows or air conditioners. Submit your commercial building data to ENERGY STAR for an energy rating.
Filed under: Conservation, Easy, Eco Friendly, Effort, Energy, Environment, Green, Health | Tags: Elevator, Stairs
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One Response to “Building Commissioning – Saving Energy in Buildings – Green Elevators aka the Stairs”
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March 27th, 2009 at 6:49 am
I like the idea of people using the stairs more, just the way you suggested prodding them along with “use the stairs day” and forcing them to use the stairs won’t work well. For some reason the human race likes to take the easy way out. I mean look at the U.S. economy, instead of reform in the early stages of the decline the government just did the easy thing and threw money at it. I feel that people would have the same approach when given the choice of using the stairs or the elevator. I have witnessed in my dorm people go up one floor on the elevator just because they were tiered. I think it would take elevators being shutdown to people whom didn’t need them, to make people change, but hell what do I know…