An Integrated Approach to Energy Management

Abstract

Energy is consumed everywhere and by everybody, in different circumstances and in different forms. Life itself is based on energy consumption, among other resources. The crisis human societies have faced since ancient times forced us to identify and use better ways to manage energy. A similar but increasingly aggravating situation humanity is confronting at current times, especially when discussing resources availability correlated with climate change, global economic difficulties or the war in Ukraine, and their impact on energy availability. Starting the 1st industrial revolution, organisations, businesses especially, started searching for ways to improve the use of resources and energy, as well as ways to store energy for longer periods of time. Increasing diversification and complexity of technologies lead in time to increased availability of energy as critical resource for human activities but, also, exposed us to various risks directly or indirectly brought by modern technologies. A strong change of paradigm in energy consumption and energy management must be made with respect to the entire life cycle of energy units, to maintain or improve our current lifestyle in the context of the crisis we are facing now, and we are prone to face in the foreseeable future. In this perspective, we need to step away from localized, sectorial approaches of energy, and move toward an integrated and integrative approach of energy management, focused on 3 important pillars – behaviour (regarding regulations/standards), technology (ICT/ICS technologies), and education.