Manitoba Race To Reduce – The Smart Energy Building Challenge
The Manitoba Race to Reduce is an energy reduction challenge that is modelled after the Race to Reduce, launched in Toronto by CivicAction in 2011. The challenge, which was officially launched in January 2017, involves collaboration between commercial building landlords and tenants to encourage smart energy use. The program is open to all landlords and tenants of commercial buildings across Manitoba. It is free to join and participants are provided with resources and support to help reduce the energy use in their buildings.
The objective of the program is to reduce participants’ energy consumption by 10% over four years. The Manitoba Race to Reduce uses ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager to measure and track building energy performance. The ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager enables a yearly comparison of not only one individual building but also an entire portfolio of building and similar buildings across Canada. The Portfolio Manager is a free, cloud based, energy benchmarking tool that allows energy consumption data to be automatically uploaded to the platform in order to track a building’ energy consumption (electric, natural gas, and water) and greenhouse gas emissions.
The energy reduction by participants will be obtained through the use of energy management solutions. Participants will be encouraged to implement energy monitoring and energy management systems in order to measure and track their consumption over a four year period. Increased energy efficiency can be attained through detailed circuit level real time energy data analytics which will provide an energy footprint for each individual piece of equipment and notify building owners and tenants if maintenance or replacement of equipment is necessary in order to reduce energy consumption.
According to the program, the energy data can be used to:
- Track historical energy consumption and compare with similar buildings.
- Identify potential issues involving high energy use in certain buildings.
- Identify potential maintenance and retro commissioning opportunities with HVAC systems and controls.
- Compare the “before” and “after” energy use with various renovation projects such as HVAC systems, building envelope and roofing projects.
- Assist in determining priorities for renovation projects for buildings with high energy use.
- Determine the carbon footprint of participating facilities.
The Manitoba Race to Reduce challenge will reward participants on an annual basis in order to celebrate the successes of landlords and tenants in achieving their energy reduction and greenhouse gas emission goals. The data collected will be used to calculate the total energy reduction for all participating buildings and to determine the annual award winners in the Race To Reduce Challenge.
For further information on this program or to join the race, please visit the Race to Reduce Challenge website. If you’re looking for a low cost solution to track your energy footprint in real time and make informed and timely decisions to improve the energy efficiency in your building, CircuitMeter offers a ‘Continuous Energy Audit’ function which will assist you in making even greater efficiency gains.