A building doesn’t have to be new to be efficient. Today’s leading building owners are retrofitting buildings, converting existing buildings into models of sustainability. Building energy retrofits are investments in efficient technology during building renovation. While most building owners still pursue single technology improvements, market leaders bundle together energy saving technologies to get deeper savings in a more comprehensive approach. Energy performance contracting is one business model that enables building owners to implement whole building retrofits and significantly lower energy consumption and operating costs. Essentially, the upgrades are paid for through energy savings over time. Photo credit: Jack Amick/Flickr.
As Europe plans the next steps to improve building energy efficiency, a report from the Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) analyzes the financial instruments available to fund deep retrofits. It also looks at the types of buildings involved and the renovation measures the financial programs support. Among the key conclusions:
Operable windows give building occupants fresh air and control over their comfort – but if used improperly, they can be counterproductive. In this video, Katie Ackerly, a researcher at the Center for the Built Environment at the University of California Berkeley, describes approaches to signaling occupants when to open and close windows.
Adam Sledd
Green Leasing Program Manager
Institute for Market Transformation
Scott Muldavin
Executive Director
Green Building Finance Consortium
Senior Advisor, Finance and Valuation
Rocky Mountain Institute
Many people stay in their homes for five years or less – not enough time to benefit from energy upgrades. In this video, Cynthia Adams, executive director of the Local Energy Alliance Program – Virginia, explores how to make sure energy efficiency adds value to properties when they are sold. The key is to provide data in forms real estate agents, appraisers, bankers and prospective...
Most building owners and occupants do not have any knowledge about the energy performance of their buildings. This information gap prevents property and financial markets from valuing energy-efficient homes and buildings. Internationally, new government policies are starting to require the disclosure of energy performance. Generally, these policies obligate owners to benchmark...
The City of Melbourne has created a new program for financing energy retrofits in commercial buildings, using a variation of the property-assessed clean energy (PACE) financing model in the U.S. Melbourne’s program has some important features that cities and countries around the world may be able replicate. As part of its Zero Net Emissions by 2020 Strategy, Melbourne has launched a 1200...
In this video, Paul Mathew, of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, describes how the U.S. Department of Energy is developing the Buildings Performance Database (BPD) to provide investors with actuarial data for the energy savings from building energy efficiency projects. The database of information includes more than 50,000 buildings.
Energy efficient buildings and urban environments are vital to reaching goals on climate, energy and development in emerging economies. On Aug. 30, 2012, representatives from the Institute for Building Efficiency briefed members of the World Bank Energy Efficiency Community of Practice on the Institute’s second-edition report, Driving Transformation to Energy Efficient Buildings: Policies...
Lighting accounts for more than 30 percent of the energy required to operate buildings and is often the first technology examined for energy efficiency upgrades because of its relatively short payback.