Giving owners the keys to sustainability

What­ev­er your opin­ion of cli­mate change, no one can deny that the weath­er is becom­ing more extreme and our built envi­ron­ment must adapt to man­age the ener­gy per­for­mance of build­ings. This is where proptech comes in. Many soft­ware tools have been launched with the aim of help­ing prop­er­ty man­agers and ten­ants address ener­gy effi­cien­cy and meet sus­tain­able build­ing goals.

You may roll your eyes at being sold yet anoth­er tech­no­log­i­cal prod­uct, but prob­a­bly already have a smart meter, solar pan­el per­haps or even a timer. These prod­ucts are fair­ly stan­dard now, but proptech is becom­ing more sophis­ti­cat­ed as inno­va­tors seek new ways to encour­age us to live more sus­tain­ably.

Smart build­ings require both human con­nec­tiv­i­ty and tech to analyse the per­for­mance of a build­ing

How­ev­er, are these prod­ucts enough to min­imise the envi­ron­men­tal impact of poor­ly per­form­ing build­ings and where does our respon­si­bil­i­ty as con­sumers lie in the midst of all this tech­nol­o­gy?

One such tech­nol­o­gy cur­rent­ly tak­ing off is prop­er­ty man­ag­er soft­ware, which is cen­tral to improv­ing the ener­gy per­for­mance of build­ings. A pio­neer is Scot­land-based arb­n­co that has a data­base plat­form which analy­ses, tracks and bench­marks build­ing ener­gy con­sump­tion data to enable organ­i­sa­tions to iden­ti­fy ener­gy sav­ings and to aid retro-fit­ting.

Its dataset deter­mines build­ing type and usage, occu­pan­cy rates and equip­ment to pro­vide an eval­u­a­tion of ener­gy con­sump­tion. So will tech­nol­o­gy such as this make the role of the prop­er­ty man­ag­er obso­lete? Dr Mah­nameh Taheri, man­ag­er of ener­gy prod­ucts at arb­n­co, thinks not. Instead, she believes that the tech­nol­o­gy will instead empow­er prop­er­ty man­agers to make sus­tain­ably informed deci­sions.

Creating sustainable buildings for the future

“Our inter­net of things solu­tions elim­i­nate the need for man­u­al col­lec­tion and analy­sis of the build­ing data, sav­ing build­ing man­agers time and makes build­ing man­age­ment sim­pler and sig­nif­i­cant­ly green­er,” she says. “Arbn insight [smart mon­i­tor­ing tool] is designed to be used over a peri­od of time as part of a con­tin­u­ous improve­ment process for man­ag­ing ener­gy con­sump­tion.”

The company’s tech­nol­o­gy exam­ines data analy­sis of ener­gy con­sump­tion and makes com­par­isons. After gath­er­ing the data, the plat­form uses machine-learn­ing to pre­dict future ener­gy con­sump­tion based on pre­dict­ed cli­mates and the building’s loca­tion. This is use­ful when it comes to improv­ing the building’s ener­gy per­for­mance.

Dr Taheri says: “Com­par­ing your build­ing with its peers, you could see that, for instance, your heat­ing-relat­ed ener­gy con­sump­tion is with­in an accept­able range for your build­ing usage type and size, in your cli­mate zone, but your light­ing ener­gy con­sump­tion exceeds the stan­dard. Then the plat­form pro­vides you with a list of light­ing rec­om­men­da­tion options that you should con­sid­er.” These com­par­isons are made on a week­ly, month­ly and annu­al basis, and puts cli­mate-aware occu­piers in the pic­ture when it comes to achiev­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Measuring the environmental impact of buildings

Ger­man proptech com­pa­ny Sen­sor­berg is also weigh­ing in on the ener­gy per­for­mance of build­ings, but focused on the con­sumer side of the mar­ket. It has imple­ment­ed its tech­nol­o­gy in a res­i­den­tial project in Berlin, which deploys a dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture sys­tem for the ben­e­fit of 110 inhab­i­tants and is designed to man­age ener­gy effi­cien­cy for homes.

Res­i­dents use their inte­grat­ed sys­tem to con­trol light­ing, under­floor heat­ing or blinds. It can also detect if a win­dow is open and can reg­u­late the heat­ing accord­ing­ly. The sys­tem tracks ener­gy con­sump­tion and, via a smart­phone, mon­i­tors elec­tric­i­ty, water and heat­ing con­sump­tion, which can be specif­i­cal­ly reg­u­lat­ed.

Karo­line Pan­tera, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at Sen­sor­berg, says: “If the sen­sor data shows an increase in CO₂ lev­el, our plat­form could give a steer­ing com­mand to the air cir­cu­la­tion sys­tem to blow more fresh air in.”

In the base­ments, the Berlin res­i­dents also have access to dig­i­tal­ly rentable stor­age areas. They can use their app to book extra ser­vices, such as the use of com­mu­nal wash­ing machines and dry­ers. This sug­gests humans will still need to be con­sult­ed for any shar­ing ele­ment of a scheme and peo­ple remain at the heart of future sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals. Con­cern that proptech will encour­age con­sumers to avoid their respon­si­bil­i­ties as cli­mate-aware indi­vid­u­als may be valid, but the emerg­ing theme is one of col­lab­o­ra­tion.

A collaborative approach

The envi­ron­men­tal impact of build­ings is now incor­po­rat­ed in glob­al polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic deci­sion-mak­ing. So will proptech prod­ucts, which promise to improve ener­gy effi­cien­cy become com­pul­so­ry if, at any time in the future, a gov­ern­ment here or abroad decides house­holds will be fined for exces­sive con­sump­tion of ener­gy in the way that some com­pa­nies are? Sharon Dar­cy, direc­tor at Sus­tain­abil­i­ty First, says that the idea is “com­plex and much will depend on car­bon tax­es”.

But if reg­u­la­tion is up for debate, will the ener­gy effi­cien­cy of build­ings in 30 to 40 years’ time be depen­dent on proptech to deliv­er eco-friend­ly homes? And will humans and proptech inno­va­tors need to con­tin­ue to work togeth­er to improve the ener­gy per­for­mance of build­ings?

Fred­die Pritchard-Smith, chief exec­u­tive of We Are Savvy, a Lon­don-based, land­lord-focused firm that gath­ers data to analyse heat maps, among oth­er inno­va­tions, says: “We believe that a smart build­ing requires both human con­nec­tiv­i­ty and tech­nol­o­gy to suc­cess­ful­ly analyse the per­for­mance of a build­ing. While the data we cap­ture is impor­tant, it is also key to engage with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, with­in that build­ing, and dis­cov­er first-hand how it is being used and if or how this can be improved.”

Proptech may be a vital tool in the bat­tle against glob­al warm­ing, but to win the war humans must occu­py the front­line.