The $535 Million Missed Opportunity in Federal Buildings

Malcolm Verdict, Alliance to Save Energy

Keywords

Abstract

The metering of federal buildings, as part of a building commissioning program, produces multiple benefits by identifying retrofits, optimizing building performance, improving indoor air quality, monitoring and verification of energy service performance contracts, and increasing the persistence of savings through operations and maintenance. The mandatory requirements are described for monitoring and verification of energy savings contracts and commissioning of new buildings. Case histories of actual savings from commissioning using sub-metering by Texas A&M’s LoanSTAR monitoring program and others indicate savings potential of 150 percent of engineering estimates of installed energy retrofits and continuous commissioning savings ranging from 12 to 30 percent. Although a 25.8 percent reduction in site energy use in federal buildings has been reported through FY 1998 compared to FY 1985, significant additional savings are possible through building commissioning and the increased use of metering for monitoring and verification. This paper estimates annual savings of one-half billion dollars ($535 million) are technically possible if continuous commissioning and optimization of major retrofits were judiciously applied to all federal buildings.