Rising trend of commercial net zero building and consumption
In a recent story written by Ashley Halligan, an analyst at Software Advice, she interviewed experts and conducted research on the rising trend of net zero building and consumption from a commercial perspective.
“In 2011, commercial and industrial buildings accounted for 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption. In response, Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) is gaining momentum as design teams and architects strive to achieve higher performance. In fact, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires that all federal facilities become net zero by 2030–and all commercial buildings achieve net zero status by 2050.
There are many definitions of “net zero,” though one definition seems to stand out:“Net zero” indicates that a building has generated at least as much power as it has consumed over a 12-month benchmarking period (which balances out seasonality factors).
In this article, several experts–including Brian Anderson, Founding Partner of Anderson Porter Design, Dru B. Crawley, former Commercial Buildings Team Lead for the Department of Energy and current Director of Building Performance atBentley Systems, and Blake Bisson, VP of Sales & Marketing at Ekotrope–shed some light on how to achieve net zero in a new or existing building. They also weighed-in on the debate whether net zero is universally attainable or just wishful thinking.”
Read the rest of Halligan’s story here.
