DOE Shows Commercial Builders How to Achieve 50% Energy Savings

October 28, 2009

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Building owners in four key commercial building sectors will now be able to achieve a 50-percent energy savings with the help of new technical documents that show how to achieve higher levels of performance.

New technical support documents from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the DOE national laboratories provide recommendations on how to achieve 50-percent energy savings in general merchandise (PDF), grocery store (PDF), lodging (PDF), and medium office buildings (PDF). The documents describe the assumptions, methodologies, and analyses used to reach energy savings over ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-2004 in these four key sectors.

As an example, design recommendations for lodging by climate zone include enhanced envelope technologies, interior and exterior lighting technologies, heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) and service water heating (SWH) technologies, and miscellaneous appliance technologies.

The lodging report also includes final energy-efficiency recommendations for each climate zone, along with the results of the energy simulations indicating a national-weighted average energy savings over all buildings and climates of 55.5 percent in comparison with the Standard 90.1-2004 as a baseline.

This represents a significant step towards realization of the DOE’s net-zero energy building goal, under the Net-Zero Energy Commercial Building Initiative, for new construction by the year 2025, said the DOE.

Report data is also shared with members of DOE’s Commercial Building Energy Alliances, which are comprised of commercial building owners and operators in the retail, commercial real estate, and hospital sectors.

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Reader Comments

I am the PM for a project for DOE building an office building at the NREL DOE Site. We are achieving incredible progress, with the goal to have the most energy efficient building in the world with a net zero energy usage. While the hurdles are significant, we are closing in on making this happen.

Peter McMillin | October 29th, 2009

ill tell you where to find low hanging friut.
enforce the building codes!
that will make your builds 50% more energy efficient right away.
comercial fenestration enfocement is a joke

glazier | October 29th, 2009

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