Energy used to be easy. All you had to do was pay the utility bill. But beginning a decade ago, there has been a proliferation of options and programs born out of deregulation and regulation, subsidy and stimulus. It can be quite overwhelming. Energy professionals trying to optimize a specific aspect of this complex mix can inadvertently sub-optimize the whole.

At World Energy, we’ve recently launched the Seven Levers of Energy Management, whereby we postulate all this complexity can be reduced to a simple equation:

Total Energy Spend = P (price of the commodity) * Q (quantity consumed) – i (any incentives earned from things like Demand Response or renewables)

As part of WattsWorking, we will continually be referring to this framework, and today, I want to talk about the Q part of that equation and our newly announced investment in a start-up with MIT roots, Retroficiency. We provided seed capital for a truly innovative idea - the Virtual Energy Audit. What the World Energy Exchange did for energy procurement, we believe the Virtual Energy Audit will do for energy efficiency.

The recently released World Wildlife Federation’s report on getting to 100% renewable energy by 2050 suggests a key lever to getting there is using less, making current buildings more energy efficient. Others see this as a lever, too. In NYC, Mayor Bloomberg is requiring audits of over 50,000 buildings. Federal Government offices are mandated to be 30% more energy efficient by 2015.

And if you do the math, there aren’t enough energy engineers to physically do the audits.

That’s where the Virtual Energy Audit comes in. With a handful of data elements and Retroficiency’s sophisticated inference engine, our Virtual Energy Audit will able to evaluate a portfolio of buildings and identify the ones where the opportunity for savings is greatest. Add more data, and you can get a rank ordered list of retrofits for a specific building, sorted by time to payback, capital investment or ROI. Add historical usage data and you can do virtual commissioning.

This is leading edge stuff, and we’re proud to have a hand in bringing it to market.