High Performance Schools: Northeast States Paving The Way For This And Future Generations

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Kamaria Greenfield

Each year, K-12 schools spend around $8 billion on energy nationwide. They use 10% of the energy used by all commercial buildings and are the third biggest energy user of all commercial building types (U.S. EPA, 2011). What if these schools were built to be more energy-efficient and sustainable? What if building and operating high-performance school buildings were a natural part of the school design and construction practice? Carolyn Sarno Goldthwaite, Senior Program Manager for the Northeast En...

DOE’s Three Year Residential Energy Code Field Study

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Kamaria Greenfield

In September 2014, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced eight states that would participate in a three year Residential Energy Code Field Study. The states include: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas. Through the project, DOE plans to establish a sufficient data set to represent statewide construction trends and detect significant changes in energy use from training, education and outreach activities. The study comprises three main sta...

Outreach to Architects in Pennsylvania

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Kamaria Greenfield

by Maria Ellingson, BCAP As often the first point of contact with prospective owners of new homes and buildings, architects are a key influencer in determining the level of energy efficiency that is included in new construction and major renovation projects. But architects have been largely absent from an important issue that’s left Pennsylvania unable to adopt an updated building code. The process for adopting the state building code - the Uniform Construction Code (UCC) - is currently de...

Nebraska Energy Code Compliance Collaborative: A Case Study On An Emerging Best Practice

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Kamaria Greenfield

by Paul Karrer In the wake of the Great Recession in 2009, Congress passed the Recovery Act to stimulate the national economy. Within that legislation, a pot of $3.1 billion in expanded State Energy Program (SEP) funding was linked to commitments from states to update their building energy codes and to develop plans to achieve greater rates of compliance by 2017. By January 2014, BCAP projects that about two of every three U.S. states will have implemented building energy codes that meet or exce...