Improving Commercial Building Energy Performance

For several decades, the building industry has been struggling with the issue of improving energy performance in commercial buildings. A number of initiatives promoted by industry organizations and government agencies have established very ambitious near term goals for commercial building performance. But despite some recent encouraging trends, over the last several decades the energy use intensity for U.S. commercial buildings has remained largely unchanged.(1) This trend must be dramatically changed if the industry is to meet its ambitious upcoming building energy use goals.