IDC Ranks Serious Energy As A Major Player in Building Management

IDC Energy Insights, in a recent report on building management, has ranked Serious Energy as one of the "major players" in building energy analytics.

It's an honor, thank you very much. Although several companies have brought software--or more accurately announced vaporware--for managing buildings for efficiency, only a few rank this high in IDC's report. Others include EnerNoc, IBM and Optimum Energy. And in the bubble chart in the report, Serious is ranked above IBM in terms of overall capabilities.

Casey Talon, the analyst who put together the report, said that one of Serious' strengths lay in synergy. Serious Energy, after all, can provide customers with energy efficient building materials like iWindow, monitor buildings for efficiency through SeriousEnergy Manager, and finance retrofits with no upfront payments through Serious Capital. Equipment, commissioning tools and money: those are the three legs of the stool when it comes to building management.

"Customers can utilize this financing for the material energy efficiency improvements provided by Serious Energy. SeriousEnergy Manager then tracks the savings to generate payments for energy efficiency investments, thereby overcoming the often insurmountable upfront cost of these capital investments. Serious Capital provides guaranteed savings of a performance contracting model," wrote Talon.

Buildings, of course, are the 800-pound problem in U.S. energy consumption. Buildings account for 40 percent of all energy consumed in America. Commercial buildings alone account for 18 percent of all of the energy consumed here. And overseas the situation is often worse: 51 percent of Singapore's energy gets consumed by air conditioning, fans and refrigeration.

To top it off, the EPA estimates that 30 percent of the energy consumed in U.S. buildings is wasted or not used optimally. To put thaty another way, approximately 6 percent of ALL of the energy generated in America is wasted in commercial buildings. (18 percent times 30 percent) That is three times as much energy as the airline industry (2.1 percent) or data centers (2 percent) consume in total, according to statistics from the Department of Energy. (You can get more data from these spreadsheets.)

Yet, no one looks at an air conditioning vent or hot water heater and thinks "You are a national security problem and an environmental hazard."

Luckily, attitudes are changing. The IDC report helps highlight that.