Honeywell Enters the Building Energy Management Market

Honeywell announced a new product on Monday: Carbon & Energy Management, a part of its suite of systems focused on building sustainability.

This is an increasingly busy category in technology, by vendors, clients, and government regulators. For example, last year  29th Street Capital had been acquiring B- and C-class properties in A- and B-class locations, but started expanding to “newer, larger, higher quality assets, where value can be added to by management efficiencies, energy saving programs, and improving market conditions,” as Rob Gersch, senior vice president of acquisitions, told GlobeSt.com at the time. 

Senior housing company 2Life Communities is extending its use of building management and control software from Embue for, among other things, to make buildings more energy efficient, reduce carbon emissions, and improve resident comfort.

California is moving to mandatory solar power for new construction. The SEC keeps talking about new ESG disclosure rules that will have an impact on CRE. The White House wants to “modernize” building codes by expanding required use of modern technologies to improve climate resistance and reduce energy usage.

And, so, it’s a fertile ground for proptech. Like BrainBox AI, an HVAC monitoring software vendor that recently announced its first installation in New York City. Or like Honeywell.

The new offering from Honeywell is to “meet two pressing, yet often conflicting, objectives: reducing the environmental impact of buildings while optimizing indoor air quality to support occupant well-being, with the aim of helping them to meet carbon neutral goals,” according to the company’s press release.

It’s another use of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. (An aside, the two get mixed together, but machine learning is considered one type of artificial intelligence and vendors almost never explain what else AI might mean to them when mentioned separately.)

“Honeywell Carbon & Energy Management establishes an energy performance baseline using up to a three-year usage history, live meter data and environmental factors to determine which assets are driving energy consumption,” the company further explains. “The enterprise-level Carbon & Energy Management software provides a real-time dashboard of critical sustainability KPIs; aggregates carbon data from energy-related emission sources in a building—gas, electricity and fuel sources; reduces energy consumption using advanced building control capabilities; and reduces carbon footprint without compromising occupant well-being or comfort.”

In short, it takes data—every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week—figures out what’s going on, and looks at how operations could be changed to reduce energy use while maintaining performance goals. The three-year history makes sense, and one might ask whether that was enough. Machine learning modifies its operations given experience, which means history. No two years necessarily follow the same weather or usage patterns. As BrainBox has said, it can take months just to build a model for a single building and for machine learning to begin adapting to real-world conditions.