Energy Star tax credits
This Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, Building Commissioning: A Golden Opportunity for Reducing Energy Costs and Greenhouse-Gas Emissions should inform the skeptics about the efficacy of this process for buildings. Regular tuneups for your car are the norm, so the same should be for your building.
I quote:
“This report responds to a widely held concern that end-users do not have confidence in the nature and level of energy savings that can be achieved through the commissioning process.”
This is what I think of when they say “sustainable”: The report states that there is a 16% median annual rate of return on investment for existing buildings and and 13% median annual return on new construction. EXCELLENT. How many other investments bring in that rate of return on a sustained basis?
The report continues:
Applying … [this] to … non-residential buildings corresponds to an annual energy-savings potential of $30 billion by the year 2030… An industry equipped to deliver these benefits would have a sales volume of $4 billion per year and support approximately 24,000 jobs.
EXCELLENT!
