Upload
Download template to gather data
Register to add new project
Enter project details and energy consumption
Share
Add users to your account
Specify their access rights
Share a locked or an editable project across organisations
Publish project to add attributable data to the public domain
Compare
Compare your design estimate against operational energy use
Find out how your building performs against others’
Study the end use composition and contributing factors of other projects
AHR-Global Building Performance Evaluations
AHR-Global have led the development of the CarbonBuzz platform and have been tracking the energy consumption of its portfolio since 2007
British Land CarbonBuzz Portfolio
Selected British Land Offices
This diagram shows typical risks of underestimating the likely energy consumption of buildings. We label these risks collectively as 'unregulated' because mandatory compliance calculations do not account for occupant-related energy use. The site invites users to go beyond compliance and refine estimates to account for these when predicting energy use.
CarbonBuzz currently helps users assess likely appliance and IT use including special equipment for common building types. Your data will help define the scale of impact from other risk areas which are major factors in operational carbon emissions, usability and comfort.
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The graphs represent the median CO2 emissions for both design and actual records sector-by-sector on a scale of 0-300 kgCO2/m2/yr. The figures below each column represent the number of records per sector. Click on the graph to see a detailed breakdown of projects in related DEC benchmark categories and to view anonymous project sheets.
Current records often miss either design or the actual record as designers rarely have operational data and occupants rarely have design data. CarbonBuzz campaigns for the broader rollout of Display Energy Certificates to improve the feedback loop between design and operation.
The CarbonBuzz database can be browsed for free without the need for registering or logging in; participating users and practices can register and start using CarbonBuzz for free at any time. Once a project template has been created, users can add multiple records to these, each representing an annual energy record for the project. These can be drawn from any project stage from design inception to operation. Records can be created with a minimum of total gas and electricity for the year or users can drill down to finer granularity if they choose. CarbonBuzz allows users to analyse and compare data entered for their buildings at each project stage through energy and carbon graphs known as Energy Bars.Users can track, review and compare energy records and contributing factors over time and generate reports on their data for external use.
Any data that could identify a project will remain private by default and cannot be attributed to individual projects or practices unless specified by the user. However, users can choose to share their CarbonBuzz projects, records or portfolios with specified users and organisations to facilitate design and operation. Projects published as part of portfolios remain anonymised unless individually published.
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There is growing evidence that current legislation is not achieving the expected reductions in the actual energy use of buildings and, if anything, can have significant unintended consequences. Large portfolio holders, in particular, are taking notice of commercial risks associated with new ‘low carbon’ buildings and refurbishments falling short of performance expectations.
CarbonBuzz is an RIBA CIBSE platform for benchmarking and tracking energy use in projects from design to operation. It is intended to encourage users to go beyond compliance of mandatory Building Regulations calculations and refine estimates to account for additional energy loads in-use. The platform allows users to compare design energy use with actual energy use side by side to help users close the design and operational energy performance gap in buildings.