If you don't know where you're at, it's hard to map your way to where you want to go. That is why any tower retrofit or green building plan should start with an assessment of status-quo energy use. Where are your energy dollars going today? What would your new building's energy consumption be like if you stick with standard building code requirements? You need to answer these questions before developing an integrated energy efficiency upgrade plan.

A good baseline will serve a number of purposes:

• It will shed light on the best opportunities to make significant energy reductions cost-effectively
• It will help you tap into incentives and financing because you can now quantify what you stand to gain by making improvements
• It will allow you to track the actual savings from improvements / design upgrades once you've made them
• It will help you manage your energy effectively by signaling system problems so that they can be corrected quickly

A simple baseline can be developed from a multi-year review of your utility costs.  But you may want to get some expert assistance: a professional energy audit will provide you with a more sophisticated understanding of your building's energy use and what the impact of various energy efficiency upgrades could be. And government incentives are available to offset the cost of energy audits.

You can find a list of Energy Management Firms that can help you with this courtesy of Toronto's Better Buildings Partnership

For new buildings, the Better Building's Partnership offers high performance new construction program that will help fund an energy use simulation

» Next step: Getting the big picture