U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Building Technologies Program – Commercial Building Initiative
Commercial Building Research
Commercial Lighting Solutions Interactive Web Tool
DOE's interactive Web tool currently delivers lighting solutions for retail and office facilities; institutional buildings will follow. The tool allows a builder or designer to enter specifics about a project and provides a detailed report about possible lighting strategies.
The Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) researches advanced technologies and systems to reduce the energy consumption of commercial buildings. Industry partners and national laboratories help to identify market needs and solutions that accelerate the development of highly energy efficient buildings. This page outlines some of the CBI's focal research projects. For more CBI research results, visit the Commercial Buildings Resource Database.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories develops recommendations through ongoing research across a variety of building types to achieve 30% and 50% energy savings over baseline. Working with key partners, these recommendations were made into the Advanced Energy Design Guides series that provide specific steps to achieve these savings in all climate zones.
CBI is monitoring hospital energy end uses to help facility and energy managers identify ways to save energy. This research ultimately will help hospitals lower utility costs, freeing up funding to improve healthcare services.
The U.S. Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Database provides data related to the total energy and resource impacts of producing a material, component, or assembly. Life cycle material assessments are critical to evaluating true impact of buildings on the environment and advise the selection of components for any project.
Energy modeling using simulation software is key to CBI's research. Modeling helps in making critical decisions about a building's design early in the process. CBI's commercial reference buildings can be used as starting points with simulation software, like EnergyPlus.
CBI is working to standardize the measurement and characterization of building energy performance through performance metrics. Reports provide guidelines to help measure, report, and evaluate energy performance.
Developed by DOE and three of its national laboratories to better inform research and builders in achieving highly-efficient buildings, these provide complete descriptions for whole building energy analysis using EnergyPlus simulation software. These modules provide a consistent baseline of comparison and improve the value of computer energy simulations using software such as EnergyPlus.
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