Results and Lessons Learned From the DOE Commercial Building Partnerships: Preprint

Over the course of 5 years, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory worked with commercial building owners and their design teams in the U.S. Department of Energy Commercial Building Partnerships (CBP) to cut energy consumption by 50% in new construction (versus code) and by 30% in existing buildings for a selected set of pilot projects. The objective was to identify strategies that could be replicated across their building portfolios. A number of building types were addressed, including supermarket, retail merchandise, combination big box (general merchandise and food sales), high-rise office space, and warehouse. The pilot projects began in pre-design and included a year of post-construction measurement data to evaluate performance. This paper describes the application of the LowEnergy Building Design Process (LEBDP) in the pilot projects, gives an overview of the results, and provides lessons learned to inform future efforts of this type. Although the pilot projects did not all reach the aggressive CBP energy saving goals, we concluded that the LEBPD could be deployed successfully with large portfolio owners in the private sector. Several ingredients, including owner commitment and a team focus on the energy goal from pre-design through occupancy, were necessary for success. Short simple payback requirements, large plug and process loads, and concern about changing the look and feel of retail spaces posed the biggest challenges to reaching the energy goals.