The Building Technologies Office (BTO) has selected three projects to receive a total of $3.7 million to study the effects of improving the implementation of commercial building energy codes.
The Institute for Market Transformation (Washington, DC) will help develop and test a methodology to accurately and cost effectively measure the impact of code compliance on energy performance in commercial buildings. They will also develop training and education curricula based on the data collection findings. These objectives advance DOE’s ultimate goal of creating a methodology that allows states and utilities to measure the energy and cost savings of increasing compliance with commercial energy codes. The availability of this information is expected to increase investment in energy code compliance initiatives, which could significantly reduce national energy consumption and emissions. The Institute for Market Transformation will perform its field studies in Florida, Nevada, Iowa, and Nebraska.
Ecotope (Seattle, WA) will conduct low-rise multifamily buildings field studies with the intent of developing a reliable and streamlined methodology for identifying energy and cost saving opportunities from increased code compliance. A well-structured methodology will provide the basis for increased investment in energy code and support energy efficiency programs. The tools developed will be made available to state and local jurisdictions to assess and track energy code compliance and implementation and should lead to increased code compliance rates. This project expands BTO's ongoing field study in the residential sector to the low-rise multifamily buildings sector. Ecotope will perform its field studies in Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, and Illinois.
The New Buildings Institute (Portland, OR) will provide cities with a repeatable protocol for benchmarking and systematically evaluating the impacts of codes and policies on municipal building portfolio performance. This project will advance city energy efficiency programs across the country by developing a framework that combines methods for collecting relevant city data with an open source technical toolkit that will help cities prioritize which buildings to invest in first.
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