Schneider Electric has announced research that found applying occupancy-based controls in meeting rooms leads to an average of 22% savings in operational energy use and carbon emissions for the meeting rooms.
The study, which is being released at MIPIM 2025 in a new white paper, Reduce carbon in the real world: Occupancy setbacks deliver big impact for commercial offices, presents compelling evidence around the impact of smart building technology and an approach for businesses seeking energy-efficient solutions that do not require extensive building retrofits.
Key findings include:
- Energy Efficiency Gains: Occupancy-based controls allowed the meeting room to remain in a resting state — at a lower temperature setpoint with minimized HVAC, lighting, and plug load use — 76% of the time during business hours, significantly reducing energy consumption.
- Energy and Carbon Reduction: Comparing high-occupancy business days to low-occupancy days over a 4-week period, the study observed the lower occupancy days had an average of a 22% reduction in operational energy and carbon in meeting rooms than on higher occupancy days, associated with fan coil, lighting, and plug load use as direct result of occupancy-based controls applied to these rooms.
- Cost Savings & ROI: The estimated payback period of two years for implementing the advanced sensoring that enables occupancy controls, is conservative, as the analysis only accounted for room-level energy cost savings. If energy cost savings from other HVAC components such as air handling units were included, the payback period would likely be even shorter.
- ndoor Air Quality & Comfort: Despite the application of controls, CO2 levels, relative humidity (RH), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) remained within industry-recommended healthy ranges, supporting occupant well-being.