Energy Savings Potential and RD&D Opportunities for Commercial Building Appliances

We investigated numerous energy-saving technologies for commercial appliances and assessed in detail the top 30 by technical potential. In our analysis, we define “commercial appliances” as energy-consuming appliances and equipment used in commercial buildings, excluding heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, lighting, commercial refrigeration, and distributed-generation systems. The most important appliance categories evaluated include: water-heaters, pool-heaters, laundry equipment, cooking equipment, information technology (IT) and office equipment, and dishwashers. While many of the technologies are already mature, they may not be currently used in targeted appliances, and some design and demonstration work may be needed to incorporate them. Water heating and IT/office equipment offer the greatest technical potentials for energy savings. The appliances we analyzed account for 2.92 quadrillion Btu (Quad) of primary energy consumption. However, there is a large discrepancy between our results and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) 2008 Building Energy Data Book (totaling 6.92 Quad), and we recommend further analysis to investigate possible sources of this inconsistency. Based on estimates of technical potential and consideration of market and technical barriers, we offer suggestions for possible actions to promote energy savings in commercial appliances. Our recommendations fall into three categories: research, development and demonstration (RDD voluntary programs; and regulatory programs. Recommended RD&D topics include absorption heat-pump water-heaters, supercritical CO2 dishwashing, and reliable electronic-ignition systems for cooking equipment. Recommended demonstration programs include solar-thermal water heating and drain-water heat recovery. This paper is based on a study commissioned by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Building Technologies Program (BT) (Zogg et al. 2009).