Comments on: Building Codes: Simple Energy Savings

By: Bennett Fisher

Bennett Fisher — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:00:00 +0000

This article calls out an issue that is rarely talked about but does have a tangible impact on energy savings. In the commercial sector, building benchmarking is another important, yet under-the-radar issue that can help drive lower energy consumption across our country’s stock of buildings. Traditional benchmarks – such as LEED, EnergyStar and spending per square foot – don’t strongly correlate to energy savings opportunities. There’s a big push at the city, state and federal level to explore new types of benchmarking programs, such as asset labeling, which provide a measure of a building based on the efficiency of the actual systems installed in the building. It will be interesting to see the progression of these new benchmarking programs, as well as building codes, in the commercial sector. – Bennett Fisher, CEO, Retroficiency

By: MK

MK — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:27:00 +0000

Where do these figures come from :

Builders often fight codes, and the ones in Illinois are no different, claiming the cost of the improvements will add $5,000 to the cost of a new home. But in fact, the increased cost of a home built to the 2012 code in Illinois will increase the home’s cost by $1500

Thanks.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 23:27:00 +0000

Now if we wanted to really move (Think Apollo program) then building codes would move even faster up the curve. Think Single famly home must produce on site at least n% of peak power use. Can design to use less or make more power. You start n at say 20% and increase by 5% a year until it is 50%.

For apartments, commerial the rules would have to be different; but could move them along also. Japan was looking at something similar; requiring all new buildings to have on site power production.

Then there is the question of pushing existing buildings forward. But the likely best approach there is a carbon tax, that is return a N dollars per person and the rest on energy eff projects.