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| Commercial Energy Efficiency: Existing Buildings Commercial Energy Efficiency: Existing Buildings  The amount of energy used by commercial buildings varies greatly by building type, size, age, climate, and other factors. In order for you to best focus your community's energy efficiency efforts, we have asked you to collect information by building type (e.g. office, retail, and warehouse). And although there are many different kinds of buildings, we've concentrated on a certain subset of the most common types and/or those that have the highest energy intensities (the energy used per square foot of building space).
Each building type has a different pattern of energy use, and consequently a different potential to respond to specific energy efficiency initiatives. For example, a food service building, which uses great deal of energy for cooking, would benefit far more from energy efficient cooking practices than would an office building. A detailed explanation of the data and assumptions that were used to calculate potential energy savings are described in the methodology section. Commercial building owners can often benefit by working with an Energy Services Company, or ESCO. ESCOs provide a one-stop shopping approach to energy efficiency by performing energy audits, providing financing, selecting and installing energy saving measures, and monitoring, measuring, and verifying energy savings. Often, ESCOs pay the upfront cost of the retrofit, billing the customer in installment payments, which depend on the extent of the energy savings. These payments are often guaranteed to be less than what the customer would normally be paying for monthly energy bills. Click here to read more about a variety of financing options for community energy efficiency projects. What is a Typical Approach to Energy Efficiency in Commercial Buildings? In general, the priorities of retrofitting an existing commercial building depend on whether the retrofit is an exhaustive one to be conducted all at once, or whether it will occur in phases. If the building has been gutted and is unoccupied, it should be retrofitted all at once. In this instance, the steps are:
In most cases, by improving the efficiency of other systems before adding a new HVAC system, the building's HVAC loads will be decreased, allowing for a smaller, cheaper, and more efficient HVAC system to be installed. New HVAC systems are generally very expensive so it is financially beneficial to upgrade other systems before the HVAC system. A number of websites provide excellent information on the specifics of energy efficiency measures for commercial buildings. The U.S. Department of Energy has an area of its website devoted to a database of software tools for buildings, with an emphasis on using renewable energy and achieving energy efficiency and sustainability in buildings. See: www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/tools_directory Also visit:
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