Title: Toward a Future Model Energy Code for Existing and Historic Buildings
Abstract: Advancements in the energy efficiency standards of building codes have made great strides in improving the energy efficiency of buildings. However, as energy codes become more stringent and more widely applied, they can pose serious obstacles to achieving deep energy savings existing buildings. Therefore, if we are to look to buildings for significant reduction in our total energy consumption, we will need a regulatory framework that can significantly improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings. Prescriptive codes are not as well suited to the constraints presented by existing conditions as they are to the relative design freedom afforded by new construction. The greater flexibility afforded by alternate modeled performance compliance paths are not as valuable to existing buildings with their higher cost of model production as they are to new designs. As proxies for actual performance, both of these can miss the efficiency strengths of existing buildings and the particulars of specific and idiosyncratic conditions that affect actual performance outcomes. This creates the need for an additional, alternate compliance path that can not only more ably address the realities of existing buildings but also do more to produce greater energy savings in existing buildings. An outcome-based compliance path would possess both of these characteristics. It would bypass the obstacles presented by both prescriptive and modeled performance compliance paths through focusing on outcomes. It also presents a way to advance code triggers that does not intensify those obstacles and goes farther than compliance triggers that are tied to construction events do. Executive Summary By most estimates, buildings account for 40%-50% of the energy consumed in the United States. In an average year, new construction and major renovations only account for 1-3% of the total building stock. As such, existing buildings necessarily compose the majority of the energy consumption and carbon emissions that are due to buildings. Advancements in energy codes have made great strides in advancing the energy efficiency of new buildings and substantial renovations. However, the energy efficient building of the previous generation is the average building of this generation, and the inefficient building of the next generation. Therefore, if we are to look to buildings for significant reductions in both energy consumption and carbon emissions, we need an energy code framework that can effectively produce deep energy savings in existing buildings, that will apply to a larger scope of existing buildings, and that will reinforce and enable other mechanisms that can foster energy efficiency in existing buildings. However, these goals could face significant obstacles moving forward within current energy code frameworks.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 8
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