There’s only one person around the world known as the Building Whisperer, but for US-based David Bartlett, his unusual title has been earned through years of developing smarter buildings that save energy, water and money.

Car exhaust fumes and palls of smoke from factories are often justifiably blamed for spewing carbon dioxide (CO2) into the environment. But the seemingly innocuous sleek city building can be just as much of a culprit.

Bartlett, head of IBM’s Smarter Building Initiative, says buildings consume over 40% of the world’s energy and emit more CO2 into the environment than cars.

By 2025, buildings will be the largest energy consumers on earth, with energy costs alone representing about 30% of the total operating costs of an office building.

For Bartlett, who has attracted a worldwide following for his innovative work in sustainability, this is simply unacceptable and he is on a mission to change it.

His travels, extolling the virtues of what he terms ‘smart’ cities, have brought him to South Africa, where he spoke at an event hosted by the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) and Innov8 Africa, a Cape Town- based information technology consulting and solutions company.

“We need to shift perspective and think of buildings in a completely different way,” he challenged the audience.

He said it was often the most obvious things that needed to be done, like monitoring how much energy is wasted by inefficient air-conditioning units, using space in a building more efficiently or simply switching off the lights.

“You wouldn’t leave your car running all night and the lights on in your home, so why should we do it in buildings?”

As in many buildings in South Africa, he said he sees buildings in New York with lights blazing throughout the night.

In the twenty-first century, he said, energy savings were easier to achieve, given the proliferation of smart sensors and control systems. Increasingly popular smart meters gave property owners and tenants the opportunity to get a handle on their energy usage. But these systems often operated in silos.

Take the example of air-conditioning units. In his work in Los Angeles, he found “one air con unit that was blowing full on hot air and another that was blowing full on cold air, working against each other, in the same building”.

The key, he believes, is integration.

“The ultimate smart city, building or campus is one where all the systems share information.” He said smarter buildings could save as much as 40% on energy costs, 30% on building maintenance and 50% on water.

Bartlett is working on several projects in communities across the US, with the goal of smart neighbourhoods in mind.

In Boston’s Back Bay area, in the US, IBM is involved in a project that helps the neighbourhood implement smart grid technology that electronically monitors and analyses power consumption.

“If you make a change, you can measure the impact and do something about it. Through carbon monitoring, we found numerous methane leaks from utilities across the city of Boston,” he said.

Bartlett said technology could be used to its full advantage. “It wasn’t long ago that we didn’t have the Internet. Now we have to add ‘the Internet of things’ – digital reads from bridges, buildings and devices. Even my toaster has a light-emitting-diode read-out,” he quipped.

Bartlett said he was particularly excited about ‘smart’ building technology being adopted in South Africa. He added that South African cities had the potential to be the first ‘smart’ cities on the African continent.

The GSB and Innov8 Africa are considering launching a postgraduate diploma in smart building innovation in anticipation of an expected surge of interest in this area.

Apart from working with property owners and tenants to reduce their energy footprint, Bartlett is also passionate about seeing more of a “blurring between a cityscape and a countryscape”.

“We need to create an architectural settling for birds and butterflies, with more green spaces to enjoy . . . buildings that are more inspiring and productive, with better air quality and better water quality.”

With a wry smile, the Building Whisperer said it helps to tune in.

“The buildings are talking. If we listen to them, we can help them out of their water-wasting, energy-wasting ways.”