County of San Diego Actions

Here at the County of San Diego, the Department of General Services has been working to improve building energy efficiency in the over 10 million square feet of facilities that the department manages. This work helps to reduce utility and maintenance costs, improves indoor air quality, and contributes to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a key objective of the Climate Action Plan.

To improve energy efficiency in existing buildings, the County completes “Retrocommissioning” projects that check, test, and adjust all energy consuming equipment to run as a fully functioning, integrated, and efficient system. For example, over time, a building’s heating and cooling system can start to underperform and certain critical components can cease to function or become obsolete. By checking the performance of these systems, the County can plan for maintenance and upgrades that end up saving on costs over the long run. Retrocommissioning projects at the Edgemoor Nursing Facility (December 2018 completion) and the Central Jail (December 2019 completion) included the reprogramming of existing controls and the installation of control devices to improve the sensitivity of heating and cooling systems to changing environmental conditions. This type of retrofit can save up to 70% of the energy required to run the system and can reduce maintenance costs since equipment is being used more efficiently and at a lower capacity. As a result of these projects and others, the County has reduced its energy consumption by 23% since CAP baseline, contributing greenhouse gas emissions reductions towards CAP Measure E-1.4.