Commercial Building Partnerships
The Commercial Building Partnerships are collaborations between companies from the private sector and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) national laboratories to conduct cost-shared research, development, and deployment (RD&D) and construct or retrofit buildings that achieve significant, unprecedented energy savings. Here you will find an overview of the Commercial Building Partnerships and how they work. You can also read more about the project stages.
Commercial Building Partnerships Overview
Currently, DOE's national labs are working with more than 20 Commercial Building Partners—including retailers, real estate management companies, and distribution facility providers—to create, test, and validate design concepts that will move the industry toward net-zero energy commercial buildings.
Each partner has agreed to:
- Construct one new building that uses 50% less energy than ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-2004, and
- Retrofit a building that uses 30% less energy than the CBECS baseline or 30% less energy than the mean of their building portfolio.
The Commercial Building Partners benefit from technical assistance from researchers at the national labs, who team with the companies to guide new construction and renovation projects.
The resulting building projects—and the detailed measurement and verification that will accompany them—will give researchers a richer understanding of the best practices and technologies for achieving high performance. And by identifying replicable approaches and sharing their knowledge base with peers, the commercial partners—leaders in their respective industries—will spur further investment in high-performance buildings.
Commercial Building Partnerships and Commercial Building Energy Alliances
The Commercial Building Partnerships were created in the same target markets as the Commercial Building Energy Alliances (CBEAs), another component of DOE's Net-Zero Energy Commercial Building Initiative. CBEAs are informal associations created among building owners and operators who want to reduce energy consumption. The CBPs and CBEAs will work together closely, sharing information and identifying promising technologies for field testing. CBEAs have been launched in the Retailer, Commercial Real Estate, and Hospital sectors. Commercial Building Partners are automatically members of their respective CBEAs.