Efficiency gets talked about to death. At this point, a lot of people assume we’ve got it dialed — that the work is done and the only thing left to do is electrify everything and move on.
And yet, especially now that parts of the industry are stepping back from electrification, the questions keep coming. How does that affect energy consulting? Aren’t we disappointed to be “going backwards” and talking about efficiency again?
Here’s my honest answer. Yes, it’s frustrating that our industry pivots back and forth based on politics. Yes, we’re doing less electrification work right now. But here’s the part that doesn’t get said enough: we do not have efficiency dialed. Not even close.
In our rush to deploy low-carbon systems and deep energy retrofits, we skipped over some critical pieces — particularly around controls and ongoing operations — that are essential for electrification to succeed at scale. That gap is a direct result of how efficiency has traditionally been handled.
We study a building, implement measures, claim incentives, and then leave it alone, expecting those measures to continue achieving savings. Meanwhile, schedules get changed to deal with complaints, overrides pile up, and control strategies stop matching how the building is actually used. On paper, the savings are still there. In practice, many strategies stop working within months.
Efficiency is often considered “done” because the opportunities have been identified, modeled, and documented. There’s an assumption that once measures are implemented, they simply stay in place. But almost every building I walk into still has basic scheduling issues — the simplest efficiency opportunity there is. Buildings change. Operations change. Seasons change. And when efficiency strategies aren’t revisited to reflect those realities, they stop fitting how the building is actually used.
Efficiency is often considered “done” because the opportunities have already been identified and documented. But almost every building I walk into still has basic scheduling issues — the simplest efficiency opportunity there is. Buildings change. Operations change. Seasons change. When efficiency isn’t revisited, it stops fitting reality.
And when that happens, efficiency doesn’t quietly disappear — it creates work. Operators spend their time responding to comfort issues and making quick manual fixes just to keep things running. Over time, efficiency measures become something they work around rather than rely on, eroding both their capacity and their trust in sustainability initiatives.
That erosion matters because electrification makes buildings more complex, not less. One of the biggest challenges electrification faces right now isn’t technology — it’s operations buy-in. We assume operators should have more capacity because efficiency is supposedly handled, but unmanaged efficiency often leaves them with less. Asking already stretched teams to support unfamiliar low-carbon systems without first reducing their day-to-day burden is a tough sell.
Low-carbon systems demand the same discipline that efficiency has been missing all along: active, ongoing management. You can’t install a heat recovery chiller and expect it to perform perfectly across seasons and operating conditions without attention. Without proper management, controls, and performance tracking, savings won’t materialize, and confidence in these projects erodes.
If we have any hope of getting operations teams on board and ready to support low-carbon initiatives, we have to show them that sustainability can make their lives easier, not harder. And that starts with getting efficiency right — not as a one-time project, but as an operational practice that frees up capacity instead of consuming it.
So no, revisiting efficiency isn’t a step backward. It’s an acknowledgment that we still have work to do — and a chance to get it right. Electrification is still critical, and it’s not going anywhere. But whether low-carbon systems are embraced will depend on getting efficiency and controls right first; otherwise, they won’t fail loudly — they’ll be quietly overridden.
If you want to dive deeper into this discussion, join us for Efficiency Is Money: How Smart Buildings Pay Off at AHR. This panel will explore how tools like AI, FDD, and standalone controls are being used to operationalize efficiency, what’s real versus hype — especially with AI — when advanced tools make sense, and how incentives can be leveraged to deliver lasting results.
