ESG management
Resources and emissions
What does it mean when there are Unspecified units within charts for carbon emissions and energy?
When an energy entry is not specified as self-procured or third-party-procured, the entry is categorized as unspecified. This can happen when the data is missing or was not provided for upload.
Filter buildings by unspecified emission scopes
You get unspecified emission scopes if the information self-procured or third-party-procured is missing for energy entries. You have several options to identify the buildings where the data is missing.
Below you will find instructions on how to filter for energy consumption entries where data is missing.
Filter via the Procured by chart
Go to the tab Energy of the resources and emissions dashboard.
Go to the chart Procured by.
Click on the section Unspecified within the chart.
View in the section Detailed Breakdown the buildings where the data is missing
Filter via the Share of emission scopes chart
Go to the tab Operational emissions on the resources and emissions dashboard.
Go to the chart Share of emission scopes.
Click on the section Unspecified within the chart.
View in the section Detailed Breakdown the buildings where the data is missing.
Filter via the filter section of the Operational emissions dashboard
Go to the tab Operational emissions on the Resources and emissions dashboard.
Go to Filter | Scopes in the right-side menu and select Unspecified.
View in the section Detailed Breakdown the buildings where the data is missing.
Solution:
Specify if energy data was self-procured or procured by a third party for optimal representation and prediction. For more information on how to add missing data, see Manage resource consumption data.
How can I check for data coverage and see which data is missing and estimated?
Every ESG management dashboard has a section Data coverage , where you can get an overview of absolute values and shares for collected, estimated, and missing data.
Hover over the data coverage indicator and view the percentage and the absolute number of assets with collected, estimated, and missing data.
Exclude estimated data from dashboards
In some cases, excluding estimated data from the dashboards help you to evaluate different scenarios for predictions and simulations of just collected and both estimated and collected data.
Go to Sustainability and select one of the Sustainability dashboards.
Go to Filter|Data source in the right-side menu.
To display only collected data, select Collected.
For more information, see Data sources.
You can also select only estimated data to see where data has been estimated for the selected year.
Why can I not see the CO2 predictions for my buildings?
The access to dashboards is restricted. To view all relevant dashboards, the BuildingMinds Platform administrator in your organization must create and assign specific roles and permissions to users.
For more information, see Authorization. In case you are experiencing any technical issues, please get in touch with us at [email protected].
How do I use the controls and filters more effectively?
You can break down the information on any dashboard by applying different filters from the right-side menu in the dashboard.
By default, the data shown on the dashboards is set to Absolute, which means that the calculations are not specific to a particular building or area. If you select only one building under Detailed breakdown, or the left-side menu, you can view only values particular to the set building.
When switching to Intensity, you can see the data based on the area measurement, which is more precisely aligned with the provided resource consumption data for the selected region.
How are the CO2 emissions calculated within BuildingMinds?
Based on the energy consumption data and corresponding emission factors from our database, we calculate CO2 emissions according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the CRREM target.
The provided data is calculated based on three main inputs:
Emission Factors: Denotes emission factors per year, subtype, and country, i.e., how many GHG emissions are associated with one unit of consumed resource.
Sustainability Targets: Denotes targets for energy intensity (i.e., consumed energy per m2 gross internal area) and carbon intensity (i.e., GHG emissions per m2 gross internal area) for a given year and building type (e.g., office building, residential building).
Area Measurement: Denotes the usable areas of a building used for computing intensities per m² of used resources.
These are then “translated” into easily readable charts and lists that you can find under the tab Sustainability.
Risk and cost prediction
What is the baseline for the energy and heating demand projection?
The official CRREM targets applied to the BuildingMinds Platform projects for future electricity and heating demand for each building based on the last year for which resource consumption was reported.
What does it mean when the prediction lines change abruptly?
The curves on the performance line dashboards reflect historical values in previous years. It shows the actual aggregated values for each year based on the assets that were part of the portfolio in that same year.
Asset transactions can therefore result in a changing performance and target at the portfolio level. If you have bought an asset with a high individual CRREM target, your weighted portfolio target will go up compared to the previous year.
If you plan to sell an asset with a high carbon intensity, your projected portfolio performance will improve in that year – so the lines will go down.
Solution:
To ensure which part of the portfolio you are looking at, check for the active filters in the right-side menu of the dashboard.
By default, the filter is set to only buildings in portfolio, which considers only currently active building. If you change it to all buildings, you can see the development of performance and target for all the assets, no matter when they were acquired or sold.
In these scenarios, we assume that the consumption data was collected for all the assets.
What does it mean when prediction lines are suddenly cut off?
The curve stops with the disposition year, so the aggregated portfolio performance is not impacted.
For checking full predictions, switch the filter to all buildings to view the full prediction for all the assets, considering all past and future transactions.
You can apply retrofit simulations if your organization sets up a custom structure. In the custom structure, you can define which buildings are part of which level in the structure. When selecting the structure element, retrofit simulation is automatically applied to all buildings within the level.
Retrofit simulation
Can I have a retrofit simulation applied to a specific group of buildings instead of a whole region?
You can apply retrofit simulations if your organization sets up a custom structure. In the custom structure, you can define which buildings are part of which level in the structure. When selecting the structure element, retrofit simulation is automatically applied to all buildings within the level.
A custom structure can only be set up by your BuildingMinds Platform administrator. For more information on custom structure, see Custom structure.
If your organization has not set up a custom structure, you can multi-select buildings from the left-side menu by holding Command for macOS or Control for Windows to see the dashboard KPIs and charts for the selected buildings.