Scaling commercial energy efficiency

Big data may soon make buildings greener. With a recent major acquisition, MIT alumni-founded Retroficiency, which has assessed hundreds of thousands of buildings, is poised to bring its advanced energy analytics platform to millions of commercial buildings. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 6 million U.S. commercial and industrial buildings account for roughly 45 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and, on average, 30 percent of the energy in those buildings is wasted. The EPA also estimates that improving the energy efficiency of those buildings by just 10 percent could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by an amount equivalent to taking 30 million vehicles off the road. Retroficiency, recently acquired by the energy and sustainability company Ecova, has been tackling that problem with a software data analytics platform that comprehensively analyzes the energy usage in thousands of buildings serviced by a utility company. It then shows the utility specific energy-conservation measures that buildings can take - such as replacing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) units, or even adjusting a thermostat - to cut wasted energy. Founded in 2009 by MIT Sloan School of Management alumni Bennett Fisher MBA '09 and Bryan Long MBA '09, the startup has since analyzed about 3.5 billion square feet of building space worldwide, identifying about 6 terawatt hours of energy savings collectively - roughly the energy consumed by 600,000 U.S. homes.