WHOLE-BUILDING APPROACH

A whole-building program approach seeks to monitor, manage and improve the energy performance of a building, or set of buildings, over time.

In contrast, many current commercial energy-efficiency programs typically provide incentives to upgrade specific equipment but rarely approach buildings as a series of connected systems that require continuous management and maintenance.

By working through CEE, program administrators can take a common approach to commercial whole-building performance, increasing opportunities to share information across programs and providing a common platform to engage customers, service providers and industry partners.

CEE monitors those North American programs that use a whole-building approach for their commercial programs. With California's commercial buildings benchmarking effort, and continued work by the ENERGY STAR Buildings program, the concept of whole-building energy performance is gaining recognition and momentum.

For further information about CEE's Commercial Building Performance efforts, contact Jason Erwin at 617-589-3949, ext. 212.