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Building commissioning (Cx) is a process for assuring efficient building operations that can be applied to new construction and existing buildings, resulting in energy and non-energy benefits. Quantifying the benefits of commissioning is challenging, but a 2009 study of 643 commercial buildings provided a solid initial data set to which we added 839 additional buildings for a significantly expanded and updated meta-analysis representing 34.7 million square meters (373 million square feet) of floor area. Since 2009 the commissioning industry has continued to grow, driven by building codes, utility programs, and rising awareness of commissioning benefits. In parallel, building controls have become more sophisticated, and analytics software has emerged to assist with commissioning. We find that delivery mechanism and market segment are key determinants of outcomes, although significant and cost-effective savings are found across the spectrum. Median primary energy savings for Cx projects in existing buildings ranged from 5 percent for those conducted under utility programs, 9 percent for monitoring-based commissioning utility programs (i.e., augmented with submetering and diagnostics), and 14 percent for Cx projects outside of utility programs. Across all project types, median savings ranged from 3 percent for the lodging market segment to 16 percent for public order and safety facilities. Outcomes did not vary significantly by building size or by market segment. Energy savings are rarely estimated for new construction commissioning. We found that the median costs of Cx were lower for the 2018 sample than for the 2009 sample—$2.85 per square meter ($0.26 per square foot) for existing buildings (a 33 percent reduction) and $8.78 per square meter ($0.82 per square foot) for new construction (a reduction of almost 50 percent). The median simple payback time for existing buildings was 1.7 years, with a 25th–75th percentile range of 0.8–3.5 years. This article summarizes these and other key findings, and discusses how the 2018 data reflects shifts in commissioning practice and outcomes.

This project investigated smart ventilation approaches to minimize energy use for providing indoor air quality (IAQ) in high performance new California homes. Evaluation criteria included annual ventilation-related energy, peak energy and time-of-use savings, and the indoor air quality relative to a minimally code-compliant ventilation system. The simulations used CONTAM’s air flow and contaminant transport model, combined with the EnergyPlus building loads model. House types representing the default California Energy Code compliance homes were investigated for four California climate zones, covering a wide range of climate types. Both single and multi-zone smart ventilation controls were investigated. Contaminant sources included contaminants emitted continuously and varying with time, temperature and relative humidity, episodic emissions from occupant activities and outdoor particles. Single-zone ventilation controls that varied ventilation depending on outdoor temperatures were able to consistently save half of ventilation-related energy without compromising long-term IAQ. Ventilation strategies that tracked occupancy were less successful, because this work included generic contaminants with constant background emission rates. Energy performance for occupancy controls improved with a one-hour pre-occupancy flush out strategy. The addition of zoning ventilation controls did not offer significant IAQ to energy improvements compared to non-zonal versions of the same ventilation system type. The best controls had HVAC energy savings of 10-20%, with individual cases reaching up to 40% savings. However, these savings cannot be achieved without worsening personal exposures for at least one contaminant. A metric is needed to assess the competing changes in exposure to different contaminants in order to determine the net-health impacts of a control strategy. Controls that directly sensed contaminants and controlled them to acceptable levels showed that the California OEHHA limit for formaldehyde completely dominates system performance, with homes not able to meet the limit even with continuous operation of a fan sized to twice the current code minimum.

Two-thirds of Americans play computer games. Although among the most complex and energyintensive plug loads, gaming has been largely overlooked in energy research and development and policy. Systems used for computer gaming in California consumed 4.1 terawatt-hours/yearin 2016 or $700 million in energy bills, with emissions of 1.5 million tons carbon dioxideequivalent allocated 66 percent to consoles, 31 percent to desktop personal computers, 3 percent to laptops, and less than 1 percent to emerging media streaming devices. Key findingsinclude:• Aggregate energy demand places gaming among the top plug loads in California, with gaming representing one-fifth of the state’s total miscellaneous residential energy use.• Market structure changes could substantially affect statewide energy use; energy demand could rise by 114 percent by 2021 under intensified desktop gaming, or fall by 24 percent given a major shift towards consoles coupled with energy efficiency gains.• Unit energy consumption is remarkably varied across gaming platform types: across 26 systems tested, client-side electricity use ranged from 5 to more than 1,200 kWh per year, reflecting equipment choice and usage patterns.• Some emerging technologies and activities are driving energy demand higher, including processor overclocking, cloud-based gaming, higher-resolution connected displays, and virtual reality gaming.• User behavior influences gaming energy use more than technology choice; duty cycle and game choice are particularly strong drivers of demand.• Energy efficiency opportunities are substantial, about 50 percent on a per-system basis for personal computers and 40 percent for consoles if past rates of improvement continue.While simultaneously quantifying efficiency and gaming performance is problematic, evidence suggests that efficiency can be improved while maintaining or improving user experience. Familiar energy policy strategies can help manage gaming energy demand, although mandatorysystem-level standards are not promising (component-level measures may be).

Rigorous consideration of green and high-performance (“green/HP”) features is rarely included in the property valuation process._ To help illuminate why this is the case, this report takes stock of the history of efforts to improve practices, and identifies barriers that have emerged and opportunities for overcoming them. Particular emphasis is placed on what energy and environmental policymakers and other stakeholders outside the appraisal community can contribute to the broader effort to advance professional practices.The history has unfolded in parallel with turbulent periods in the housing market for which appraisers and their customers are deemed to share responsibility, followed by cycles of regulations, siloing of appraisers in the name of professional integrity, and commoditization of the valuation process itself. This pattern has important ramifications for aspirations that appraisers engage more fully in identifying and valuing the green/HP characteristics of homes. On the one hand, it is legally and ethically incumbent on appraisers to do so, yet on the other hand it is perceived as a risky avenue to follow. Risks arise where findings can be challenged as either over- or under-stating value, together with a market environment in which the complexity of their assignments increases despite downward pressure on appraiser fees.While efforts to address green/HP considerations date back to the early 1980s, the vast majority of activity has taken place within the past five years. Many players have engaged in the efforts to promote improved valuation practices. These include the Appraisal Foundation, The Appraisal Institute, Colorado Energy Office, Earth Advantage, EcoBroker, Elevate Energy, Fannie Mae, Federal Housing Administration, Home Innovation Research Labs, The Institute for Market Transformation, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, National Association of Homebuilders, National Association of State Energy Officials, National Association of Appraisers, RESNET, USEPA, USDOE and its National Laboratories, the U.S. Green Buildings Council, and the Vermont Green Homes Alliance. Many activities have resulted, ranging from trainings, to data-gathering instruments, and the emergence of a literature attempting to statistically isolate the effects of green/HP characteristics on home values. In some cases, the results of studies have been overgeneralized and oversold, and embodied flawed methods.Although the green/HP community has encouraged appraisers to focus on exemplary buildings (e.g., LEED or ENERGY STAR Certified), any level of green or energy performance can in fact influence value, including below-average performance (a.k.a. “brown discount”), irrespective of whether or not the building has been formally rated. This overly narrow focus represents a significant missed opportunity. Other surmountable challenges include limitations to non-appraisers’ understanding of the appraisal process (and practical constraints therein). A byproduct of this can be unrealistic expectations of what appraisers can and will do in the marketplace. These challenges notwithstanding, the environment for moving forward has improved. There is better data today (a critical need); expanded efforts to disclose energy use information (characteristics, consumption, bills); improved and more pervasive building energy codes, building rating and labeling initiatives; and a host of federal, state, and local policies that have collectively brought green/HP practices much more into the mainstream. Meanwhile, a renewed focus on professional standards of care and competency for assessing green/HP homes make it increasingly important for appraisers to consider these factors in their assignments.Despite the past four decades of studies, there is little if any discernible uptake of these practices by the appraisal practice at large. It would behoove interested parties to step back and consider what new strategies might be productive. A key element of any new plan should be to reset the nature of interactions with the industry, with the goal a more collaborative, two-way discussion to help improve outsiders’ understanding of the valuation process. It is not only the appraiser that needs to be engaged and could benefit from awareness raising. Homeowners, builders, lenders, utilities, insurance companies should also provide input on how green/HP factors impact property valuations and ways to accurately reflect these considerations in appraisals and real estate transactions more broadly. Given extensive inertia within the appraisal industry and a mixed history of interactions with the non-appraisal stakeholders, it is unlikely that the status quo will achieve much unless followed with more coordinated and persistent efforts. Workshops, studies, and memoranda of understanding will not on their own have much impact, and do not address deeper structural issues. Expectations are often unrealistic and not attentive to real-world constraints faced by appraisers. The report identifies key barriers impeding more thorough consideration of green/HP factors in residential real estate appraisals, and solutions for mitigating them. Barriers•Although industry standards of practice caution against bias of any sort, a skeptical predisposition towards “green” is reinforced by information deficiencies.•Information deficiencies result from the lack or difficulty of obtaining usable data on green/HP features in subject properties as well as valid sales comparisons or cashflow analyses.•Competency deficiencies, such as lack of conversancy in relevant technical topics, leads to oversights, and disjointed treatment of relevant information.•Time/cost pressure and process commoditization (e.g., template-based approaches) result from highly constrained budgets, quick turn-around times expected of appraisers, and standardized practices that were not developed with green/HP considerations in mind.•Professional differences between appraisers and sustainability professionals include divergent objectives, the former being market observers and the latter market influencers.•Risk aversion arises from multiple concerns including veracity, accuracy, and persistence of energy data, impacts of operational choices, new sources of appraiser liability associated with green/HP assessments, industry pressures not to over-value buildings or suggestion of bias, and concern about spending non-billable time on complex assignments.•A public policy vacuum has been created by disjointed and uncoordinated efforts from public-sector stakeholders, insufficient efforts to discuss and understand the appraisal industry and process, and a perception by some valuation professionals that green/HP is oversold.Opportunities•Elevating the competency of appraisers can be achieved through a combination of improved industry standards of care and equal-access training and professional development offerings.•Development of better information resources must focus on building-level information that provides robust documentation as well as aggregate sales-comparison data and other contextual information such as local codes, typical upgrade costs, energy prices, etc.•Improved energy benchmarking and rating tools could provide appraisers with information more well-adapted to their particular needs, which differ from those of typical audiences such as energy managers.•Better characterizing and managing risk will enable appraisers to cope with uncertainties in performance information, and help identify where risks may be introduced or mitigated by green/HP features, including higher costs or obsolescence of poorly-performing buildings.•Integrating disaster resilience and sustainability in appraisals would recognize important synergisms among these features, including durability and ability of green/HP buildings to better withstand external hazards.•Mitigating the problem of additional time/cost for performing assignments is an essential need that can be addressed by providing easier access to information and analytic procedures, perhaps coupled with new resources to defray the associated costs.•Enhancing demand for improved appraisals is a fundamental need, and depends on owners, developers, lenders, and others soliciting competent appraisers to perform scopes that expressly call out green/HP considerations, and to critically review the work product for compliance before acceptance.•Engaging new market participants, such as energy utilities and insurance companies can ensure fuller representation and participation of market stakeholders already engaged in green/HP activities and capable of furnishing valuable data and managing associated risks.Cutting across these individual activities, there is a need for outside stakeholders to formulate and follow a roadmap instead of piecemeal initiatives, bridging the professional/cultural divide between appraisers and green/HP communities, and tracking progress in order to know what is working. A more coherent communication and training strategy is needed, as the appraisal industry is highly fragmented, with two-thirds of appraisers opting out of membership in trade associations.In sum, while there is no silver bullet for advancing the practice of valuing green/HP features, there are concrete opportunities. Parties seeking solutions must identify barriers they wish to address and select from among potential initiatives that map to those barriers. Close collaboration with the appraisal community is critical, as non-appraisers have historically obtained limited traction with this industry due to lack of understanding of the nuances involved in the valuation profession. Large organizations and agencies should have a united approach; the perception or reality of a fragmented and uncoordinated strategy is unsettling for prospective partners in the appraisal industry. This requires improved communication and education within and among these communities.

Large numbers of commercial buildings have sought to improve their energy and environmental performance, with half of all leasable U.S. offices now designated at some level of “green”. All proper/es fall somewhere on the green/high-­‐performance spectrum (above and below average) whether or not they bear a formal label or ra/ng.1 Varia/ons in the level of performance can either posi/vely or nega/vely influence value. This component of value can be shaped by many factors, from u/lity costs to tenant/owner preferences that translate into income (rent levels, vacancy rates, lease-­‐up /mes, etc.). Occupant percep/ons of indoor environmental quality are another poten/al influence on value. While there has been liYle uptake of this thinking by prac/cing appraisers, the increased prevalence of green/HP prac/ces combined with concerns about appraiser competency are compelling the industry to adapt their tradi/onal techniques to this new driver of value. However, the overly narrow focus of policymakers on appraisal of labeled or rated exemplary buildings (e.g., LEED or ENERGY STAR Cer/fied) represents a significant missed opportunity. Any level of green or energy performance can in fact influence value, including below-­‐average performance (a.k.a. “brown discount”), irrespec/ve of whether or not the building has been formally rated. Another surmountable challenge is the limita/ons to non-­‐appraisers’ understanding of the appraisal process (and constraints therein). A crucial byproduct of this is unrealis/c expecta/ons of what appraisers can and will do in the marketplace. This report iden/fies opportuni/es for catalyzing improvement of the green/HP appraisal process, which apply to all involved actors—from owner, report-­‐ordering client, the appraiser, and the appraisal reviewer—and fostering more demand for appraisals that recognize green/HP property aYributes. The intended audience is primarily the public policy community and other stakeholders outside the formal appraisal community who can contribute to the broader effort to advance professional prac/ces. The discussion begins with a descrip/on of the appraisal process and the points at which green/HP considera/ons can enter the analysis. A series of major barriers to beYer prac/ces are iden/fied along with approaches to reducing them.

When it comes to innovation in energy and building performance, one can expect leading-edge activity from the technology sector. As front-line innovators in design, materials science, and information management, developing and operating high-performance buildings is a natural extension of their core business.The energy choices made by technology companies have broad importance given their influence on society at large as well as the extent of their own energy footprint. Microsoft, for example, has approximately 250 facilities around the world (30 million square feet of floor area), with significant aggregate energy use of approximately 4 million kilowatt-hours per day (Figure 1).

Quality assurance and optimization are essential elements of any serious technological endeavor, including efforts to improve energy efficiency. Commissioning is an important tool in this respect. The aim of commissioning new buildings is to ensure that they deliver-if not exceed-the performance and energy savings promised by their design. When applied to existing buildings, one-time or repeated commissioning (often called retrocommissioning) identifies the almost inevitable drift in energy performance and puts the building back on course, often surpassing the original design intent. In both contexts, commissioning is a systematic, forensic approach to improving performance, rather than a discrete technology.

Scientists are front and center in quantifying and solving environmental problems. Yet, as a spate of recent news articles in scientific journals point out, much can be done to enhance sustainability within the scientific enterprise itself, particularly by trimming the energy use associated with research facilities and the equipment therein (i,ii,iii, iv). Sponsors of research unwittingly spend on the order of $10 billion each year on energy in the U.S. alone, and the underlying inefficiencies drain funds from the research enterprise while causing 80 MT CO2-equivalent greenhouse-gas emissions (see Box). These are significant sums considering the opportunity costs in terms of the amount of additional research that could be funded and emissions that could be reduced if the underlying energy was used more efficiently. By following commercially proven best practices in facility design and operation, scientists--and the sponsors of science--can cost-effectively halve these costs, while doing their part to put society on a low-carbon diet.

Thanks to imperatives for limiting waste heat, maximizing performance, and controlling operating cost, energy efficiency has been a driving force in the evolution of supercomputers. The challenge going forward will be to extend these gains to offset the steeply rising demands for computing services and performance.

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Some white light-emitting diode (LED) light sources have recently attained levels of efficiency and cost that allow them to compete with fluorescent lighting for off-grid applications in the developing world. Additional attributes (optics, size, ruggedness, and service life) make them potentially superior products. Enormous reductions in energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions are thus possible, and system costs can be much lower given the ability to downsize the charging and energy storage components compared to a fluorescent strategy. However, there is a high risk of "market-spoiling" if inferior products are introduced and result in user dissatisfaction. Complete systems involve the integration of light sources and optics, energy supply, and energy storage. A natural starting point for evaluating product quality is to focus on the individual light sources. This report describes testing results for batches of 10 5mm white LEDs from 26 manufacturers. Efficacies and color properties are presented.

In the race to apply new technologies in "high-tech" facilities such as data centers, laboratories, and cleanrooms, much emphasis has been placed on improving service, building capacity, and increasing speed. These facilities are socially and economically important, as part of the critical infrastructure for pharmaceuticals, electronics, communications, and many other sectors. With a singular focus on throughput, some important design issues can be overlooked, such as the energy efficiency of individual equipment (e.g., lasers, routers and switches) as well as the integration of high-tech equipment into the power distribution system and the building envelope. Among technology-based businesses, improving energy efficiency presents an often untapped opportunity to increase profits, enhance process control, maximize asset value, improve the workplace environment, and manage a variety of business risks. Oddly enough, the adoption of energy efficiency improvements in this sector lags behind many others. As a result, millions of dollars are left on the table with each year of operation.

The Home Energy Saver (HES, http://HomeEnergySaver.lbl.gov) is an interactive web site designed to help residential consumers make decisions about energy use in their homes. This report describes the underlying methods and data for estimating energy consumption. Using engineering models, the site estimates energy consumption for six major categories (end uses); heating, cooling, water heating, major appliances, lighting, and miscellaneous equipment. The approach taken by the Home Energy Saver is to provide users with initial results based on a minimum of user input, allowing progressively greater control in specifying the characteristics of the house and energy consuming appliances. Outputs include energy consumption (by fuel and end use), energy-related emissions (carbon dioxide), energy bills (total and by fuel and end use), and energy saving recommendations. Real-world electricity tariffs are used for many locations, making the bill estimates even more accurate. Where information about the house is not available from the user, default values are used based on end-use surveys and engineering studies. An extensive body of qualitative decision-support information augments the analytical results.

The insurance industry can play a material role in decreasing the vulnerability of developing countries and economies in transition to weather-related natural disasters while simultaneously supporting both its own market-based objectives and the objectives of sustainable development. Although insurance is not a "silver bullet" for the problems posed by natural disasters in emerging markets, public-private partnerships can enhance insurance's ability to spread the risks and manage the costs of weather-related disasters as well as to increase the pool of people who have access to coverage. (For simplicity in this report, the phrase "emerging markets" is intended to encompass developing countries and economies in transition.) Promising strategies for emerging markets involve establishing innovative products and systems for delivering insurance and using technologies and practices that both reduce vulnerability to disaster-related insurance losses and support sustainable development (including reducing greenhouse gas emissions). These strategies can enhance sustainable development efforts and increase the insurability of risks, making insurance markets in emerging markets more viable. Emerging markets are especially vulnerable to extreme weather events, which impede development by causing physical damage, compromising human and ecosystem health, diverting scarce resources to disaster relief and recovery, and deterring future investment and insurance availability by amplifying the risks faced by foreign interests. An average of 300 million people are affected or killed each year by weather-related disasters in emerging markets. Characteristics of emerging markets contributing to their particular vulnerability in contrast to developed nations include: greater frequency of poverty; weaker lifelines (transportation, communication, utilities, emergency response, and hospitals); poorer quality of construction and absence of or deficiencies in building codes and other regulations; and high dependence on resource-based industries (e.g., agriculture). Natural disasters such as drought often dislocate large groups of people, amplifying their vulnerability to future disasters. Development itself can compound these vulnerabilities by promoting population growth, urbanization, intensive coastal development, and concentrations of climate-sensitive physical and health-related hazards. With its pool of financial reserves, the global insurance market provides considerable adaptive capacity for weather-related damage to property, life, and health. The global insurance market--perhaps the world's largest industry--represented $2.9 trillion in premiums in 2003, or approximately eight percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). To put this in perspective, the insurance industry s revenues make it equivalent to the third largest country in the world in terms of GDP. In 2003, total premiums in emerging markets represented $314 billion (up from $270 billion just a year earlier) or 11 percent of the global total, with growth rates often dramatically higher than those in the industrial world (twice as high, on average, between 1980 and 2000) and often exceeding GDP growth rates. Emerging markets are poised to represent half of world insurance premiums by the middle of this century.Insurance premiums are rising in part because the economic costs of natural disasters are growing, as is the insured share (up from a negligible level in the 1950s to approximately 20 percent of the total today). Insurance market conditions vary regionally. Current insurance penetration (premiums per GDP) is lowest in Africa and Asia and highest in Latin America. Premiums as a percent of GDP are lowest in the Middle East/Central Asia and Latin America and highest in Africa. The smallest market by total premiums is the Middle East/Central Asia, and the largest is South and East Asia (excluding Japan). The economic costs of weather-related events are high, totaling $1 trillion worldwide from 1980 through 2003. During this period, insurance covered four percent of total costs of weather-related disasters in emerging markets compared to 40 percent in high-income countries. While relatively small, insurance payments to people in emerging markets associated with these losses were three-times the magnitude of international aid. The potential for changes in weather patterns, including both average conditions and extreme events, would likely raise the demand for insurance whether the changes are a result natural variability or human-induced climate change. At the same time, increases in weather-related damage create uncertainties and challenge insurers ability and willingness to assume or affordably price these new risks. Sustainable development can contribute to managing and maintaining the insurability of these risks and thereby reduce the need for individuals and governments to absorb the costs.Because of the multi-national structure of the insurance and reinsurance markets, and other factors, the economic consequences of extreme weather events are becoming increasingly globalized. The growth of foreign insurers premiums in emerging markets averaged more than 20 percent per year through the 1990s. During the late 1990s, the U.S. alone was collecting approximately $40 billion in premiums each year for policies placed in other countries. This globalization of the risks and consequences of natural disasters is a significant reason for the insurance industry to seek to reduce the risks of claims worldwide. Cost-effectively mitigating the damage from (and thus the costs of) natural disasters would be a boon not only to the insurance industry and developed nations but to public health and sustainable development in emerging markets. One of many strategies is curtailing deforestation, which reduces risks of wildfire, malaria, mudslides, and flooding as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Sustainable energy technologies can also mitigate risk; for example, distributed power systems coupled with efficient energy end-use technologies reduce business interruptions resulting from damage to the power grid. In sum, involving the insurers of extreme weather events in the development and execution of strategies that contribute to public health and sustainable development would enhance disaster resilience, reduce the magnitude of losses, and thus help increase insurers' willingness to establish, maintain, and expand a constructive presence in emerging markets.

The energy service company (ESCO) business model could become significantly more effective by integrating the energy-efficiency purveyor and their capital into the underlying building ownership and operation partnership, rather than the current model in which the ESCO remains an outsider with higher transaction costs and limited interest and participation in the value created by the cost savings. Resource conservation advocates rarely use the language of real estate to articulate the cost effectiveness of capital improvements aimed at reducing utility costs in commercial and residential income properties. Conventional methods that rely on rarefied academic notions of simple payback time or a narrow definition of return on investment fail to capture a significant component of the true market value created by virtue of reduced operating expenses. Improvements in energy and water efficiency can increase the fundamental profitability of real estate investments by raising Net Operating Income (NOI), and hence returns during the holding period, and, ultimately, proceeds at time of sale. We introduce the concept of an Energy Services Partner, who takes an equity interest in a real estate partnership in exchange for providing the expertise and capital required to reduce utility operating costs. Profit to all partners increases considerably as a result. This approach would also help to address a crisis facing ESCOs today stemming from their considerable liabilities (through guaranteed savings) and negligible offsetting assets.

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is working to improve energy efficiency in high-tech facilities, i.e., laboratories, data centers, and cleanrooms. With their high ventilation requirements and correspondingly high process loads, 7x24 operation, and importance to the overall economy, these types of facilities offer important (and often under-exploited) potential for energy savings. In California alone, two large electric power plants could be avoided with the widespread adoption of measures to improve energy efficiency in this arena, saving half a billion dollars per year for facility owners. To help identify specific promising opportunities, the California Energy Commission sponsored the development of technology research "Roadmaps" for cleanrooms and laboratories (in 2002) and data centers (in 2003). These were developed with industry participation and provided dozens of specific recommendations. The balance of this article focuses on the case of cleanrooms.

Examining the intersection of risk analysis and sustainable energy strategies reveals numerous examples of energy efficient and renewable energy technologies that offer insurance loss-prevention benefits. The growing threat of climate change provides an added motivation for the risk community to better understand this area of opportunity. While analyses of climate change mitigation typically focus on the emissions-reduction characteristics of sustainable energy technologies, less often recognized are a host of synergistic ways in which these technologies also offer adaptation benefits, e.g. making buildings more resilient to natural disasters. While there is already some relevant activity, there remain various barriers to significantly expanding these efforts. Achieving successful integration of sustainable energy considerations with risk-management objectives requires a more proactive orientation, and coordination among diverse actors and industry groups.

There exist hundreds of building energy software tools, both web- and disk-based. These tools exhibit considerable range in approach and creativity, with some being highly specialized and others able to consider the building as a whole. However, users are faced with a dizzying array of choices and, often, conflicting results. The fragmentation of development and deployment efforts has hampered tool quality and market penetration.The purpose of this review is to provide information for defining the desired characteristics of residential energy tools, and to encourage future tool development that improves on current practice. This project entails (1) creating a framework for describing possible technical and functional characteristics of such tools, (2) mapping existing tools onto this framework, (3) exploring issues of tool accuracy, and (4) identifying "best practice" and strategic opportunities for tool design. evaluated 50 web-based residential calculators, 21 of which we regard as "whole-house" tools (i.e., covering a range of end uses). Of the whole-house tools, 13 provide open-ended energy calculations, 5 normalize the results to actual costs (a.k.a "bill-disaggregation tools"), and 3 provide both options. Across the whole-house tools, we found a range of 5 to 58 house-descriptive features (out of 68 identified in our framework) and 2 to 41 analytical and decision-support features (55 possible).We also evaluated 15 disk-based residential calculators, six of which are whole-house tools. Of these tools, 11 provide open-ended calculations, 1 normalizes the results to actual costs, and 3 provide both options. These tools offered ranges of 18 to 58 technical features (70 possible) and 10 to 40 user- and decision-support features (56 possible).The comparison shows that such tools can employ many approaches and levels of detail. Some tools require a relatively small number of well-considered inputs while others ask a myriad of questions and still miss key issues. The value of detail has a lot to do with the type of question(s) being asked by the user (e.g., the availability of dozens of miscellaneous appliances is immaterial for a user attempting to evaluate the potential for space-heating savings by installing a new furnace). More detail does not, according to our evaluation, automatically translate into a "better" or "more accurate" tool. Efforts to quantify and compare the "accuracy" of these tools are difficult at best, and prior tool-comparison studies have not undertaken this in a meaningful way. The ability to evaluate accuracy is inherently limited by the availability of measured data. Furthermore, certain tool outputs can only be measured against "actual" values that are themselves calculated (e.g., HVAC sizing), while others are rarely if ever available (e.g., measured energy use or savings for specific measures). Similarly challenging is to understand the sources of inaccuracies. There are many ways in which quantitative errors can occur in tools, ranging from programming errors to problems inherent in a tool's design. Due to hidden assumptions and non-variable "defaults", most tools cannot be fully tested across the desirable range of building configurations, operating conditions, weather locations, etc. Many factors conspire to confound performance comparisons among tools. Differences in inputs can range from weather city, to types of HVAC systems, to appliance characteristics, to occupant-driven effects such as thermostat management. Differences in results would thus no doubt emerge from an extensive comparative exercise, but the sources or implications of these differences for the purposes of accuracy evaluation or tool development would remain largely unidentifiable (especially given the paucity of technical documentation available for most tools).For the tools that we tested, the predicted energy bills for a single test building ranged widely (by nearly a factor of three), and far more so at the end-use level. Most tools over-predicted energy bills and all over-predicted consumption. Variability was lower among disk-based tools, but they more significantly over-predicted actual use. The deviations (over-predictions) we observed from actual bills corresponded to up to $1400 per year (approx. 250 percent of the actual bills). For bill-disaggregation tools, wherein the results are forced to equal actual bills, the accuracy issue shifts to whether or not the total is properly attributed to the various end uses and to whether savings calculations are done accurately (a challenge that demands relatively rare end-use data). Here, too, we observed a number of dubious results. Energy savings estimates automatically generated by the web-based tools varied from $46/year (5 percent of predicted use) to $625/year (52 percent of predicted use). The estimates reflect widely different packages of measures proposed by the tools, and thus a diversity of "messages" sent to users about the opportunities for saving energy.Lay users would likely experience even more variability in results, due to the many technical judgments required to translate actual building characteristics and occupancy patterns into tool inputs. Based on spot checks, we also discovered a remarkable number of results that suggest errors in programming or algorithm accuracy. More systematic studies need to be done in order to draw firm conclusions about tool accuracy. There are numerous potential avenues for improvement of residential energy tools. For example, many provide only estimates of existing energy bills and no recommendations or estimates of potential savings, and fewer still provide cost-effectiveness or emissions analysis. Few web- or disk-based tools offer substantial qualitative content to support decision-making based on quantitative results. Only one of the web-based tools is suitable for professional audiences, while all of the disk-based tools are directed toward professional audiences and-due to their complexity-none are suited for use by consumers.

This database tool provides a structured approach to recording design decisions that impact a facility's design intent in areas such as energy efficiency.Owners and de signers alike can plan, monitor and verify that a facility's design intent is being met during each stage of the design process. Additionally, the Tool gives commissioning agents, facility operators and future owners and renovators an understanding of how the building and its subsystems are intended to operate, and thus track and benchmark performance.

Existing approaches for saving energy in hoods are complicated and costly to implement, and do not address the worker safety issues inherent in the traditional fume hood design. Innovation is hampered by various barriers stemming from existing fume hood testing/rating procedures, entrenched rules of thumb, and ambiguous and often contradictory guidance on safe levels of airflow. To address the shortcomings of existing approaches and to promote innovation in the marketplace, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has developed and patented a promising new technology--The Berkeley Hood--which uses a "push-pull" approach to contain fumes and move air. Small supply fans located at the top and bottom of the hood's face, push air into the hood and into the user's breathing zone, setting up an "air divider" at the hood opening. Consequently, the exhaust fan can be operated at a much lower flow rate. Because less air is flowing through the hood, the building's environmental conditioning system can be downsized, saving both energy and initial construction costs--offsetting the potential added cost of the Berkeley Hood. This report describes the technology development behind the Berkeley Hood, field trials demonstrating pollutant containment down to 34 percent of full flow, current R & D needs, and technology transfer work underway to continue moving the hood towards commercialization conservative assumptions, we have identified a preliminary U.S. electricity savings potential for the Berkeley Hood of $240 to $480 million annually, a number that would rise with the inclusion of space-heating fuel.

Among the key barriers to investment in energy efficiency improvements are uncertainties about attaining projected energy savings and apprehension about potential disputes over these savings. The fields of energy management and risk management are thus intertwined. While many technical methods have emerged to manage performance risks (e.g. building commissioning), financial risk transfer techniques are less developed in the energy management arena than in other more mature segments of the economy. Energy Savings Insurance (ESI) - formal insurance of predicted energy savings - is one method of transferring financial risks away from the facility owner or energy services contractor. ESI offers a number of significant advantages over other forms of financial risk transfer, e.g. savings guarantees or performance bonds. ESI providers manage risk via pre-construction design review as well as post-construction commissioning and measurement and verification of savings. We found that the two most common criticisms of ESI - excessive pricing and onerous exclusions - are not born out in practice. In fact, if properly applied, ESI can potentially reduce the net cost of energy savings projects by reducing the interest rates charged by lenders, and by increasing the level of savings through quality control. Debt service can also be ensured by matching loan payments to projected energy savings while designing the insurance mechanism so that payments are made by the insurer in the event of a savings shortfall. We estimate the U.S. ESI market potential of $875 million/year in premium income. From an energy-policy perspective, ESI offers a number of potential benefits: ESI transfers performance risk from the balance sheet of the entity implementing the energy savings project, thereby freeing up capital otherwise needed to "self-insure" the savings. ESI reduces barriers to market entry of smaller energy services firms who do not have sufficiently strong balance sheets to self-insure the savings. ESI encourages those implementing energy saving projects to go beyond standard, tried-and-true measures and thereby achieve more significant levels of energy savings; and ESI providers stand to be proponents of improved savings measurement and verification techniques, as well as maintenance, thereby contributing to national energy savings objectives and perhaps elevating the quality of information available for program evaluation. Governmental agencies have been pioneers in the use of ESI and could continue to play a role in developing this innovative risk-transfer mechanism. There is particular potential for linkages between ESI and the ENERGY STAR (registered trademark) Buildings Program. It is likely that ENERGY STAR (registered trademark)-labeled commercial buildings (which have lower performance risk thanks to commissioning) would be attractive to providers of energy savings insurance. Conversely, the award of energy savings insurance to an ENERGY STAR (registered trademark)-labeled building would raise the perceived credibility of the Label and energy savings attributed to the Program.

During the past three years, working with more than 150 organizations representing public and private stakeholders, EPRI has developed the Electricity Technology Roadmap. The Roadmap identifies several major strategic challenges that must be successfully addressed to ensure a sustainable future in which electricity continues to play an important role in economic growth. Articulation of these anticipated trends and challenges requires a detailed understanding of the role and importance of reliable electricity in different sectors of the economy. This report is intended to contribute to that understanding by analyzing key aspects of trends in the economic value of electricity reliability in the U.S. economy. We first present a review of recent literature on electricity reliability costs. Next, we describe three distinct end-use approaches for tracking trends in reliability needs: 1) an analysis of the electricity-use requirements of office equipment in different commercial sectors; 2) an examination of the use of aggregate statistical indicators of industrial electricity use and economic activity to identify high reliability-requirement customer market segments; and 3) a case study of cleanrooms, which is a cross-cutting market segment known to have high reliability requirements. Finally, we present insurance industry perspectives on electricity reliability as an example of a financial tool for addressing customers' reliability needs.

The insurance industry stands to be impacted by global climate change, and also has considerable opportunity for participating in mitigation and adaptation. Weather-related events touch almost all types of insurance providers, although the degree of vulnerability varies substantially. U.S. insurers currently pay 60% of global losses from weather-related natural catastrophes, and these types of losses are expected to rise as a result of climate change. The effects of increased losses can lead to upward pressure on insurance reserves and prices, the sensitivity of insurers' stock prices to major weather-related events, and an increasing number of insolvencies. This study found that the U.S.insurance industry is particularly vulnerable to climate change, yet firms have assumed positions on all points of the public policy compass and a range of barriers serve to impede their involvement in the issue. The fact that insurers transfer such risks to consumers, the capital markets, and the government sector represents an important public policy issue if such risks rise in the future. The continued insurability of such risks is a central question, especially given that most experts project increases in extreme events going forward.