Commercial Buildings
Energy Performance Contracting for New Buildings
This guide describes energy performance contracts and performance-based fees for new buildings. Performance contracting provides an incentive for architects to design and construct efficient buildings and promotes better integration between architects, engineers, builders, owners, and operations and maintenance staff. The contracts provide an incentive to the design and construction community…
Lightfair: Economics of Daylighting and Occupant Productivity
This presentation makes the case that workers are more productive in buildings that provide daylighting. The presentation provides several examples of office buildings, stores, and manufacturing facilities with ample outdoor light. Statistics on absenteeism and worker productivity support the claims.
Design Recommendations for High-Performance Data Centers
In 2003, RMI convened an innovative whole-system design charrette to challenge the current model for data centers and develop a groundbreaking data center design—a clean-sheet model with no compromises. We brought together about ninety high-level, broad-thinking, technically deep industry experts with strategic visions in engineering, computer design, energy, data management,…
Green Pays Its Way—Performance-Based Fees
This article explains how giving building and design professionals a financial incentive to create energy-efficient schools can be a winning strategy for both the firms that design and build schools and the students who learn in them. Performance-based fees offer benefits for the building owner, the architect and engineer, the…
The Superefficient Passive Building Frontier
This article suggests that integrated whole-building design can yield superior comfort with about three to 30 times less mechanical energy and often with lower capital costs, but that achieving this poses fundamental challenges to professional education and practice and to compensation structure. The article provides a case study of the…