Commercial Buildings Partnerships - Overview of Higher Education Projects

The Commercial Building Partnership (CBP), a public/private, cost-shared program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), paired selected commercial building owners and operators with representatives of DOE, its national laboratories, and private-sector technical experts. These teams explored energy-saving measures across building systems – including some considered too costly or technologically challenging – and used advanced energy modeling to achieve peak whole-building performance. Modeling results were then included in new construction or retrofit designs to achieve significant energy reductions. CBP design goals aimed to achieve 50 percent energy savings compared to ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2004 for new construction, while retrofits are designed to consume at least 30 percent less energy than either Standard 90.1-2004 or current consumption. After construction and commissioning of the project, laboratory staff continued to work with partners to collect and analyze data for verification of the actual energy reduction. CBP projects represent diverse building types in commercial real estate, including lodging, grocery, retail, higher education, office, and warehouse/storage facilities. Partners also commit to replicating low-energy technologies and strategies from their CBP projects throughout their building portfolios. As a result of CBP projects, five sector overviews (Lodging, Food Sales, General Merchandise, Higher Education, Offices) were created to capturemore » successful strategies and recommended energy efficiency measures that could broadly be applied across these sectors. These overviews are supplemented with individual case studies providing specific details on the decision criteria, modeling results, and lessons learned on specific projects. Sector overviews and CBP case studies will also be updated to reflect verified data and replication strategies as they become available.« less