4 Easy Ways to Lower Your Building’s Energy Costs (Southern California Facilities Expo 2025)

Have you picked all of the low-hanging fruit in your facility when it comes to energy efficiency? As Joseph Amader, principal of Joseph Amader Consulting and consultant for the Building Operator Certification (BOC) program, explained at the 2025 Southern California Facilities Expo, sometimes the simple fixes can have an outsized impact.

“How do you know if your building is operating efficiently? Most have room for improvement,” Amader explained. “Most buildings can cut total energy use by 5 to 30% while fully maintaining or improving both comfort and function.”

Over time, buildings can become less efficient and consume more energy than they really need to operate and keep occupants comfortable. An energy tune-up will recommend both simple low-cost fixes and longer-term projects that you can prioritize over time, giving you a roadmap to savings.

Operations and maintenance-related energy waste often falls into four categories, according to Amader: equipment scheduling, outside air usage, sensor error, and simultaneous heating and cooling.

1. Equipment Scheduling

“Have you ever been by your building at night when you normally operate during the day? What do you primarily see?” asked Amader. “Lights on in areas that may not be occupied.”

There are several things you can do to immediately address equipment that’s operating according to the wrong schedules:

Make sure custodial staff know to turn off lights after hours as they move through the building.
Use occupancy controls wherever possible.
Check whether your energy management system is accounting for weekends and holidays.
See if the lights and HVAC are actually turning off as they’re programmed to.
Ensure any special event schedules have been reprogrammed back to normal.
Have your staff do a night walkthrough to confirm that things shut off when the building is unoccupied.

2. Outdoor Air Usage

Outdoor air equipment needs to be inspected on a regular basis, Amader said. Inspect the outdoor air intakes and other exterior openings for obstructions. Debris and bird nests can appear before you know it. Amader also recommends these steps for making sure your outdoor air supply is operating efficiently:

Inspect hardware, including dampers and the blades of fan motors, and service them as necessary.
Check the sensors associated with your outdoor air system and calibrate, repair, or replace as needed.
Check the programming for your economizer. Many controllers include a diagnostic mode that cycles the economizer through its various operating conditions; check the controller too.
Confirm that the dampers are modulating in appropriate conditions—for example, when outdoor temperatures are between 45 and 65 degrees F. and there’s a call for cooling.
Make sure the HVAC systems meet your airflow and supply temperature setpoints.
Check the dampers to make sure they can achieve 100% closure with no air leakage.

3. Sensors

Today’s buildings use many kinds of sensors, including space, temperature, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and return air temperature. Critical control sensors, such as return air temperature, are the most likely to cause large energy penalties for you that affect many zones of the building, yet they may not cause comfort issues, Amader explained.

“Sensor error is hard to detect unless the sensors are calibrated regularly,” Amader said. “Many sensors can be calibrated, but others need to be replaced periodically. It’s important to know the specifications of the sensor in order to maintain it.”

4. Simultaneous Heating and Cooling

Central fan systems supply space conditioning to multiple areas in a building, and each area has its own space conditioning needs. At the zone level, the quantity of air is modulated to satisfy the cooling load and may need to be reheated to meet a request for heating, Amader explained. Many fixable issues can cause simultaneous heating and cooling, such as:

Too much outdoor air
Overlapping control loops
Leaking valves or dampers
Sloppy valve or damper controllers (especially pneumatic ones)
Abandoned overrides
Missing or damaged pipe or duct insulation

“Missing insulation is often an area where you’re not necessarily always looking or going into that space,” Amader said. “That’s one item where you may want to do at least an annual inspection, or if you’re going into that area for other reasons, be cognizant as you’re going by for condition and excessive leakage.”

Having the heating and cooling systems working against each other means chillers and boilers may run when you don’t really need them, or a large chiller or boiler may start operating when a smaller one could have handled the load, Amader said. Areas that are undercooled or underheated can also affect occupant comfort.

The Building Operator Certification (BOC)

Ready to find more energy savings in your building? Consider earning the Building Operator Certification (BOC). This two-part certification will lead you through conducting your own lighting and energy audits so you can find low-hanging fruit easily. The organization also offers a Fundamentals of Energy Efficiency course that doesn’t require any on-the-job knowledge, making it ideal for new hires or people in your organization that don’t necessarily have hands-on experience with facility management, such as sustainability managers or director-level personnel.