by Brianna Crandall — February 21, 2014—Eneref Institute, an advocate for sustainable development since 2001, has announced the launch of its Natural Interior Daylight (NID) initiative, a campaign tailored to advance the specification of daylighting as a significant light source in commercial and residential facilities, whether for new construction projects or renovations.
According to Eneref, multiple lighting studies have demonstrated increased health and human productivity benefits for students and employees in spaces with properly designed natural interior daylight. In addition, daylight harvesting through the use of windows, skylights and tubular daylighting devices, in place of or in conjunction with traditional electric lighting, has been shown to make possible a significant reduction of a building’s energy load.
To promote the NID initiative, Eneref Institute has just launched a daylighting market report entitled 2014: The Seven Market Obstacles to Daylighting, which was published in the February 2014 issue of the journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), the LD+A magazine. It is also available on the Eneref Web site.
Eneref Institute’s Natural Interior Daylight initiative will spotlight a multieconomic sector of the daylighting industry by publishing a series of case studies featuring facilities that benefited from the installation of natural interior daylighting. These reports will highlight specific solutions and validate the health, productivity and energy benefits within various vertical markets. Eneref’s case studies are drawn from interviews representing a broad range of sales channel stakeholders, from solution providers to end users.
Because of daylighting’s enormous benefits, the use of natural interior daylight in residences and buildings should be much more common, asserts Eneref. “You don’t need a degree in illuminating engineering to know that a room with a view—one with windows that lets in natural light—is what we desire. Inherently we just know,” says Seth Warren Rose, founding director of Eneref Institute. “Yet, while few technologies combine as many health and environmental benefits, the daylighting market remains only a sliver of what it could be.”
Eneref Institute already leads a related industry-wide initiative, Solar Thermal Advantage, that is designed to increase adoption of solar heating and cooling in residential and commercial facilities by working closely with government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency.
A subsequent report will encapsulate Eneref’s daylighting case studies, and include contributions from lighting designers, building owners and finance organizations as well as from manufacturers of daylighting controls, components and complete systems. Those invited to participate in Eneref’s NID initiative will provide expertise across all sectors of the daylighting industry and represent a wealth of diverse perspectives, says the group.
