Jason Webb, Managing Director, Electronic Temperature Instruments (ETI)
The recent completion of JPMorgan Chase’s new Manhattan skyscraper typifies how far the built environment sector still is from a sustainable level of environmental performance. Constructed with enough steel to wrap around the Earth twice, engineers have also estimated that subtle design changes could have reduced its overall carbon footprint by 20-30 per cent.
The built environment is full of missed opportunities for energy reduction like this. While many can be found in the construction stage, it’s a similar story once buildings enter their operational phase. Heating and cooling technologies, for example, currently account for 15 per cent of global carbon emissions according to the World Economic Forum. Yet the potential impact of areas such as temperature monitoring are often overlooked.
What building managers are typically nudged towards
Major asset replacements and deep retrofit projects have long been go-to solutions for reducing carbon output. Under net zero strategies, organisations will typically consider replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, upgrading to high-efficiency chillers, implementing solar photovoltaic and battery storage, and overhauling entire insulation networks.
But while these solutions can deliver effective results over time, their impact must be appropriately contextualised. Each requires significant investment, often depends on lengthy grant funding or board approval processes and can then take years to plan, procure, and implement.
In the meantime, as buildings continue to operate day to day, they’re wasting significant levels of energy across their heating and cooling systems due to avoidable inefficiencies that more precise temperature monitoring could address immediately.
Temperature-related issues that go under the radar
Poor sensor calibration is a common issue. While most thermometers are initially accurate, they can easily drift after installation without regular calibration checks. Even small inaccuracies of just a few degrees can have a disproportionate impact on asset output. HVAC systems, for example, often respond over-aggressively to slight deviations, where they keep running at an unnecessary intensity for longer than required. The result is huge amounts of unnecessary carbon output.
Temperature sensors are also carelessly placed in many workspaces, ending up next to heat sources, in direct sunlight or in draughty air pockets. As a result, their measurements don’t reflect actual conditions and assets begin compensating for issues that don’t exist. A sensor placed next to a window, for instance, will likely record lower averages and then instruct a HVAC to pump out more heat than required.
Even when sensors are well placed, many building managers fail to monitor temperature with the level of detail required. Readings are often taken from a single set point that serves as an average for an entire space. Unusually hot or cold spots, as well as inevitable fluctuations throughout the day, go consistently unnoticed, once again resulting in inaccurate system outputs and unwarranted carbon emissions.
Ultimately, all these inconsistencies erode trust in the data over time. And when this happens, decision making over optimum temperature levels shift to guesswork, with vague rules of thumb replacing any rational, data-led approaches. Building managers and their occupants begin relying on manual overrides and abandon energy optimisation strategies.
Translating accuracy into carbon reductions
By correctly positioning sensors, performing routine verifications and calibrations and checking whether representative readings are being recorded, building managers can start achieving instant carbon savings.
This means system faults can be detected earlier. With reliable data to work with, identifying broken sensors, valves that are stuck open and zones that are behaving inconsistently all become easier. Carbon savings are uncovered that would have otherwise remained hidden.
Assets can then perform better, for longer. When they aren’t instructed to aggressively respond to false temperature fluctuations, their output remains more consistent over time, extending lifespans and ultimately reducing the need for costly replacements.
Precision also eliminates those concerns over data reliability. In the cold winter months, facilities teams don’t need to ramp up the heating ‘just in case’, while in the summer they can stop pre-empting employee complaints by unnecessarily overcooling their spaces. Decision making remains data-driven and more aligned with live workspace conditions.
Achieving hidden carbon savings through precise temperature monitoring
All these changes are relatively inexpensive and quick to implement, making them essentials for any carbon-conscious building management team. While large-scale retrofit projects often take centre stage, accurate, representative and consistent temperature monitoring delivers its own, often underestimated, decarbonisation benefits. These solutions simply cannot be overlooked in the built environment’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.
This article appeared in the March 2026 issue of Energy Manager magazine. Subscribe here.
