Publications

As the U.S. building stock electrifies and decarbonizes in the coming decades, an unprecedented amount of new electrical load will be added to the grid. How easy or difficult this transition will be depends, in part, on both building energy codes like the IECC and ASHRAE 90.1 and the electrical codes like the National Electric Code (NEC).  This session will address NEC requirements around solar PV, home batteries, Energy Management systems, as well as exploring implications for electric panel sizing. Speakers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) and New Buildings Institute (NBI) will summarize the barriers identified in the electrical code and proposed changes, present on guidelines for complying with the NEC, and discuss various ways that the electrical and energy code intersect.

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

In early 2023, BECP released a guide titled Community Energy Resilience Planning for Extended Power Outages. This guide outlined planning approaches and best practices that local governments can use to establish effective plans for long-term power outages associated with climate threats.   This supplement report serves as a companion piece to that guide. It presents six detailed case studies of communities that have led the way in resilience planning and also highlights specific solutions in five other communities. To provide a representative sample of leaders in resilience planning, the authors engaged communities of varying sizes and in diverse geographic locations with varying climate hazards. 

With fewer building department staff, longer distances to travel between job sites, and less opportunity for workforce education and training, energy code enforcement can present unique challenges in rural communities. This webinar will highlight some of these specific challenges faced by code officials and others in the field and describe existing solutions and new opportunities to help improve code enforcement and compliance.

Standard 90.1-2022 was published in January 2023, triggering the statutorily required DOE review process. To meet the statutory requirement, DOE conducted a technical analysis to evaluate and quantify the expected energy savings associated with Standard 90.1-2022. This report documents the methodology, technical analysis, and findings supporting DOE’s determination on Standard 90.1-2022.

DRAFT (subject to change)

There is a great opportunity to make an impact by addressing the energy use and performance of existing buildings. In this webinar, speakers will discuss the use of Building Performance Standards (BPS) and outline best practices, tools, and financial incentives that can be leveraged to support BPS implementation.

62 Commercial Buildings were evaluated for compliance with the 2009 IECC/ASHRAE 90.1-2007 be-tween October 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011. Of that number, 17 buildings were eventually dropped from the study for several reasons: Building would not be completed within time frame and no similar building could be found to merge Project “died” prior to construction ever starting Building was completed or nearly so prior to first visit by Evaluator.

The objective of this report is to assess the compliance of newly-constructed single-family homes with the Vermont Residential Building Energy Standards (RBES). This analysis is part of a broader study of the single-family residential new construction market in Vermont.

This Executive Summary provides a high level review of the results for the Rhode Island Energy Code Compliance Baseline Study. In this section, we state the study objectives, summarize the evaluation approach, and present key findings, conclusions and recommendations.

This report presents the results of a Study on the rate of compliance with the New York State (NYS) energy code. The Study tested the protocols developed by the US Department of Energy to determine if NYS’s new and renovated residential and commercial buildings exceed the 90% compliance threshold that states will be will be required to meet by 2017 as part of ARRA legislation. This Study performed detailed plan review and field inspections on 44 newly constructed residential and 26 new commercial buildings. The Study also included interviews with policy makers, contractors, engineers, architects, and code officials; and surveys of architects, homeowners, builders, and code officials who planned, constructed and inspected renovations.

The Nebraska Energy Office (NEO) commissioned Britt/Makela Group, Inc. (BMG) to assess compliance with the commercial provisions of the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). The goals of the project were to: 

• Assess compliance rates for projects that represented typical commercial construction in Nebraska 
• Collect information on energy code compliance issues that could be used to establish a framework for future energy code implementation programs in the state.

This report provides the results and methodologies for the 2010-2011 Iowa Energy Code Pilot Study that was conducted by the Iowa Department of Public Safety, division of State Fire Marshal, State Building Code Bureau. This study was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy with support from Pacific Northwest National Laboratories – Building Energy Codes Project and the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (MEEA). Preliminary work on the study began in May of 2010. A contract with MEEA was signed in October 2010 with work commencing on the study in January 2011. The primary goal of the study was to determine the rate of compliance with the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code throughout the state of Iowa. Secondary goals of the study were to determine average energy code inspection durations, provide training to local code officials and builders participating in the study, and to determine areas of improvement.

The goals of this study were threefold: 1) Provide feedback to the BECP on the implementation of the BECP protocol 2) Develop a preliminary pattern/range of the existing compliance rates of newly constructed residential dwellings and commercial buildings based on jurisdictions in Illinois that have adopted the building energy codes and 3) Identify areas where home performance and codes training and education activities could be improved or refocused. Measurements of a small sample set (10) of commercial buildings were also taken. Due to the insignificance sample size, a commercial compliance rate is not reported here.

Project Goal: Assess and record energy code compliance of buildings currently under construction, following the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) processes, in compliance with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), and identify procedural changes in code enforcement and training needed to improve compliance rates.