Report Structure > Opportunities and Scenarios

Building owners commission an energy audit with a primary objective and often one or more secondary objectives. Most commonly we see this ranking:

•	Primary Objective:

Reduce annual operating costs at a reasonable level of investment.

•	Secondary Objectives:

Renew or replace aging building assets (capital upgrade).

Improve tenant comfort or building usability.

Reduce environmental impact.

Any single action that a building owner can take to achieve one or more of these objectives is called an opportunity. An opportunity consists of activities and associated financial parameters (implementation costs, operating costs, and annual savings), so each opportunity can be thought of as an investment in the building.

The opportunities identified by the audit process could be reported together, however we have found that opportunities satisfying secondary objectives may not contribute strongly to the primary objective and so should be reported separately to avoid confusing the investment picture.

As an example, take the situation of an older high-rise building with leaky single-pane windows that are badly in need of replacement. While there would be energy savings from implementing the opportunity, new windows are very expensive and the simple payback is calculated at 32 years. The main reasons to replace leaky windows are to improve tenant comfort and prevent further deterioration of the building structure. If this opportunity were rolled up and reported to management along with other less expensive energy savings opportunities, it could push the overall payback above an acceptable return on investment.

ManagingEnergy provides a way to easily organizing opportunities into investment scenarios. We normally report on three scenarios, each with its own investment summary

When the scenarios are reported separately, the benefits in each scenario are clear. They are not diluted by opportunities that are included inappropriately.

Building owners or managers often subscribe to the ManagingEnergy system after an energy audit is completed. They use the populated database to create and modify scenarios freely, to find the best possible match between benefits and available funds. At implementation, ManagingEnergy will help to phase the required work, and will report on the achievement of energy conservation targets.