The budding “demand management” industry is already  making major inroads in the corporate world. Innovators like  EnerNoc, using state-of-the-art software, help companies manage energy use and automatically reduce consumption  during peak periods, selling the “saved” electricity back to  utilities at a profit and forestalling the need for the utilities  to purchase high-priced energy on the spot market. FirstFuel  Software, meanwhile, analyzes a building’s electric use to  produce an energy-saving plan—and it does so remotely,  without a need for engineers to ever visit the building.

Almost all these energy management technologies are  enabled by the availability of data. Capturing this data  creates entire frontiers in energy management—much as Amazon reconfigured the supply chain and business  model of consumer retail. Except, unlike Amazon, whose  business model turned many brick-and-mortar players into  dinosaurs, there are not necessarily “losers” in the energy management revolution—the producers, intermediaries, and consumers can all win.

How important are such innovations? Consider this: Peak  electricity demand is rising faster than overall demand, so more and more power plants must be built to run for just  a few hours a day. One recent study found that 21 percent  of power plants run, on average, for less than an annual  average of three hours per day—just to meet that peak  demand

Companies generally spend a significant portion of their  operating costs on energy, yet they generally have a poor  understanding of their energy consumption and how to better manage it. From better management of buildings  and vehicle fleets, to smarter use of technology, to tighter oversight of their entire supply chain, organizations can mobilize countless tools to transform how they use energy  and other resources. The benefits of active energy and sustainability management are not only financial—though  the bottom-line effect is the one most likely to motivate management—they also foster an ethos of sustainability  throughout an organization, attract consumers who are  now savvy about how “green” the products and services  are that they consume, and serve to shield a company  from being buffeted by energy price volatility.

An efficiency “sea change” is taking place offshore as well—in the world of shipping. Technology is allowing designers to reinvent how ships are made and how they  move, revolutionizing the industry. The B9 Energy Group in the United Kingdom is retrofitting Rolls Royce engines to run on natural gas, thereby reducing fuel consumption. But B9’s real innovation is in the giant high-tech sails that  provide most of a ship’s propulsion. These will be able to unfurl or fold up at the push of a button, avoiding the need for the large crews that manned the rigging of large sailing ships in years gone by. Even more impressive: the DK Group in the Netherlands has tested what it calls an “air cavity system” that enables a ship to glide at low friction through the water by injecting air around the submerged part of the ship's hull, creating a carpet of bubbles under the vessel. These innovations in shipping crystallize the notion of locally embedded technologies that are globally connected—a hallmark of the new technology-driven energy era.

Without a coordinated view of cost, consumption, operational and facility data there can be no enterprise energy management strategy. >>>

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