Benefits and Costs of Energy Standard Adoption in New Commercial Buildings: Fid-Bau Portal

Benefits and Costs of Energy Standard Adoption in New Commercial Buildings

J. Kneifel

Energy efficiency requirements in current energy codes for commercial buildings vary across states, and many states have not yet adopted the newest energy standard edition. As of December 2011, states have adopted energy codes ranging across all editions of American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings (ASHRAE) 90.1 (-1999, -2001, -2004, and -2007). Some states do not have a code requirement for energy efficiency, leaving it up to the locality or jurisdiction to set its own requirements. This study considers the impacts that the adoption of newer, more stringent energy codes for commercial buildings would have on building energy use, operational energy costs, building life-cycle costs, and cradle-to-grave energy-related carbon emissions. The results of this report are based on analysis of the Building Industry Reporting and Design for Sustainability (BIRDS) database, which includes 12 540 whole building energy simulations covering 11 building types in 228 cities across all U.S. states for 9 study period lengths. The performance of buildings designed to meet current state energy codes is compared to their performance when meeting alternative building energy standard editions to determine whether more stringent energy standard editions are cost-effective in reducing energy consumption and energy-related carbon emissions. Each state energy code is also compared to a Low Energy Case (LEC) building design that increases energy efficiency beyond the ASHRAE 90.1-2007 design. The estimated savings for each of the building types are aggregated using new commercial building construction data to calculate the magnitude of the available savings that a state may realize if it were to adopt a more energy efficient standard as its state energy code.