Buenos Aires Expanding Energy Efficiency Retrofit of Public Buildings

Buenos Aires is the political, financial, and cultural hub of Argentina, but also the country’s largest energy consumer, using far more energy than it produces.

Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo courtesy of solarthermalmagazine.com.

“Generation and distribution facilities are operating at their capacity due to lack of investments. For this reason, the national government usually imports energy in order to satisfy growing demand,” according to a joint report by the Environmental Protection Agency of Buenos Aires and the ICLEI, an international association of local governments implementing sustainable development.

Besides making sure the whole city has power to operate, the Buenos Aires government is also responsible for the maintenance of about 1,500 public buildings, including schools, hospitals, public service centers, and cultural centers. The city government spends about €20 million per year on electricity for these buildings.

To lower its energy costs and bring down its greenhouse gas emissions, the city is in the process of expanding its “Program of Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings” that was initiated in 2008.

Under the program, the city’s EPA will expand its current retrofit study project to include 15 more buildings. Their current energy usage will be evaluated, and then modifications will be made to lower their energy costs.

The city’s agency is “expected to invest €150,000 in professional contracts to implement the energy saving diagnosis and €100,000 for equipment for the 15 buildings. The cost of human resources needed for each energy diagnosis is approximately €10,000,” according to the report.

The agency has already completed the energy analysis of six buildings, which are now waiting to enter the modification phase of the process. Each energy analysis will include:

• The surveying of significant electrical devices and their consumption levels during operation.
• Installing sensors to record temperature and humidity.
• Surveying the number of personnel working in a building.
• Analyzing a building’s water consumption.

The energy saving modifications and follow-up analysis for the lead building in the project has already been completed. Some of the results included suggestions that could easily be implemented in any building at very little to no cost. These included:

• Replacing TRC monitors with LCD monitors. The TRCs consume 128 watts, compared to LCDs that consume 100 watts.
• Substituting to more energy efficient transformers, which for them resulted in an energy savings of 16 percent.
• Setting computers to go into sleep mode or shut down if left unattended for a certain period of time.
• Disconnecting electrical equipment during non-work hours. In the lead building, a procedure was put in place that the last person to leave each floor became responsible for switching the central switchbox off. Previously, lights, computers, and other equipment were often left on throughout the night.

There was an interesting twist though to the overall results of this analysis of this building. Despite the definite energy savings, the financial savings were not as great because of the low energy costs in Buenos Aires.

Energy in Buenos Aires is subsidized by the national government, and the feeling among many of the city’s decision makers in the public sector is that the energy saving renovations aren’t worth the upfront costs.

Despite the low energy costs, these public decision makers will likely have no choice in the matter because the city council has approved an ordinance (Law 3246/09) to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

The implementation of the ordinance gives the city’s EPA the authority to mandate the adoption of energy efficient practices in all public buildings. The consensus in the report is that “public authorities should provide good examples and encourage other to follow.”

This has a lot to do with the fact that city’s highest energy consumption rate is found within the residential sector, followed by commerce and commercial industry. Government is actually the city’s lowest energy consumption sector.

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