LONDON — Both building energy management systems (BEMS) and enterprise energy management (EEM) have major parts to play in delivering distributed energy and demand response services connecting across smart buildings, says Memoori Business Intelligence Ltd. Integrating services in buildings is not a new development but recent advances have spurred demand and opened up new business opportunities. Memoori’s new research report, “The Market for BEMS and EEM 2013 to 2017,” suggests how this will develop, and together how they will achieve more than the sum of their parts when they are fully integrated, not just interfaced, delivering more benefits and a better return on investment.

The largest market for BEMS is North America with a share of 23.27 percent followed by the European Union (EU) at 20.25 percent. Demand in North America and the EU declined in 2007 and 2008 respectively as the construction of new buildings declined.

The BEMS market in North America returned to growth in 2012 and the EU is forecast to stabilize in 2013 and then return to growth in 2014. Asia will deliver the highest rates of growth. China and India are the fastest growing markets and they are expected to sustain current growth rates of around 18 percent to 2017. Latin America and the Middle East are forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8 percent from 2013 to 2017.

The major challenge for BEMS suppliers, Memoori says, is that their business is morphing into the much wider EEM business and at the same time interfacing with the smart grid and they need to accommodate this.

The two major prongs of the EEM business lie in making smart buildings much smarter and the smart grid fully automated demand response (ADR) capable across the transmission and distribution network by providing a real time analysis of supply and demand. The U.S. market for EEM solutions is estimated to be $6 billion in 2012, and could grow to $15 billion by 2020.

The last decade has seen EEM develop from providing a specific energy domain service delivering data aggregation and consolidation to an enterprise scale service providing cost reduction and energy efficiency applications in smart buildings. The more sophisticated software package can deliver optimal energy solutions across all facets of energy supply, consumption, conservation, and total emissions control in single buildings, multiple buildings, and multiple sites, across different countries.

Large multi-national corporations are seeking solutions to provide an enterprise view of energy use and associated costs that can also be implemented across multiple facilities. This is not a “one size fits all” solution as vertical markets by building type have different needs and priorities in addition to vendor preferences.

Memoori expects that the smart building submarkets will be targeted by type of vertical building. However EEM companies need to be able take the data from the BEMS and this is where, for retrofitting existing buildings, they will need to extract and join data from BEMS systems that operate on different communication protocols.

EEM will bring about a sharp evolutionary change to the building services and management business, states Memoori, because the buyers’ demands will require a high level of commercial and technological expertise that is not yet honed by many suppliers. To acquire these skills, it will require alliances and partnerships between the various groups of players and across the vertical markets. Those that grasp the opportunity will be rewarded with a highly profitable and fast growing business.

For more information, visit www.memoori.com.

Publication date: 11/4/2013

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