In non-residential buildings such as hotels, care facilities and office complexes, a significant proportion of heating energy escapes into unused areas. Over a five-year period, this results in average five-figure sums of money. Regardless of comprehensive energy-efficient renovations like building insulation, inadequate or non-existent heating controls continuously cause high energy costs and CO2 emissions.
For the sustainable enhancement of energy resilience in non-residential buildings, the year 2026 is considered crucial. The World Bank forecasts a 16 percent increase in commodity prices for this year. Concurrently, legal regulations, such as Section 71a of the Building Energy Act (GEG), have been in force since 2025. According to GEG Section 108, non-residential buildings with heating and air conditioning systems exceeding a nominal output of 290 kilowatts face fines of up to EUR 5,000 if adequate building automation and control systems are not implemented. Early implementation of these measures allows for a rapid return on investment and optimal utilisation of available funding.
The relevant legal provisions typically affect hotels with at least 60 rooms, care homes with 50 residents or more, and office buildings with areas exceeding 4,000 square metres. The European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) will further tighten requirements in four stages by 2029. This includes, among other things, energy monitoring with open interfaces, indoor climate monitoring, and automatic lighting control. From 2030, these requirements will also be extended to smaller systems. Delays in implementation lead to avoidable losses over several heating periods. Furthermore, a positive ESG rating facilitates access to financing.
Common short-term measures such as time programmes or behavioural appeals often prove ineffective in boosting energy resilience. As long as human intervention plays the primary role in energy management of non-residential buildings, errors and waste are inherent. A central strategy for optimising energy resilience in hotels, care homes or office buildings lies in the automatic linking of room occupancy or usage with heating output.
While classic building automation can theoretically ensure this linkage, its implementation in existing buildings often fails due to high wiring effort and massive interventions in the building structure. More efficient solutions are offered by IoT platforms with LoRaWAN radio-based thermostats. These systems handle both radiator control and energy monitoring and can be activated with minimal installation effort. A current example demonstrates the potential: the use of an IoT platform at 54 locations of a leading national operator of care facilities enabled the realisation of energy savings of up to 25 percent in a short time. This underscores the effectiveness of digital solutions for optimising energy consumption in non-residential buildings.
