by Brianna Crandall — December 3, 2010—U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced November 30 that 24 projects are receiving a total of nearly $21 million in technical assistance to dramatically reduce the energy used in their commercial buildings. This initiative, supported with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will connect commercial building owners and operators with multidisciplinary teams including researchers at DOE’s National Laboratories and private sector building experts.
Through DOE’s Commercial Building Partnerships, the teams will design, construct, measure, and test low-energy building plans, and will help accelerate the deployment of cost-effective energy-saving measures in commercial buildings across the United States. The teams will help guide projects to achieve 30 percent measured energy savings in existing buildings and 50 percent energy savings in new construction projects.
About half of the two dozen projects focus on energy efficiency upgrades for existing buildings. The three-year projects will provide comprehensive business and technical case studies for broad publication, including actual energy performance data from the completed projects, to help spur wider adoption of energy-efficient building practices across the industry.
The projects are funded with a public/private cost-sharing agreement, in which the building owners and operators contribute at least 20 percent. Building owners and operators do not receive direct funding through the project, but instead get access to state-of-the-art technical guidance to implement energy efficiency technologies throughout the design, construction, and evaluation phases of their building and retrofit projects. This includes energy modeling and energy performance verification by laboratory researchers and private sector experts.
The selected building owners and operators benefit by learning about measures they can apply across their extensive building portfolios. Each project will receive technical assistance valued at between $200,000 and $1.2 million, depending on the scope and nature of the plan. The selected projects are located in several states and include The Home Depot and Walmart facilities, environmental organizations, higher education facilities, and several government agencies.
For more information, see the DOE Web site.
