Articles Tagged with ''building performance''

The Atlanta City Council unanimously passed a building energy benchmarking and disclosure ordinance. Two days later, the Portland, Oregon, City Council unanimously adopted its own benchmarking ordinance, making Atlanta and Portland the 12th and 13th U.S. cities, respectively, to adopt such policies.

IBM has announced a new smarter buildings partnership with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the first higher education institution to pioneer use of a new cloud-based analytics system for reducing energy and facility operating costs.

Life sure is strange. I find myself appearing in the pages of this fine publication after more than 30 years of working for a competitive magazine. And, yet, it’s like a homecoming of sorts.

Contractors from all around the country recently traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, for the third annual Building Performance Forum, presented by ACCA and The NEWS.

Designing a building that simply meets local code requirements is not necessarily the optimal way to do it when you consider the long-term costs. Now, building professionals can use a new database developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to evaluate whether it pays to exceed code requirements for energy efficiency.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that its EnergyPlus™ software, which models whole-building energy and water use, has been rewritten in the C++ programming language for improved performance. EnergyPlus lets users model design and operation alternatives — including HVAC system changes — on building energy performance.

Thirty-nine percent of the total energy used in a building is wasted. But 84 percent of a building’s total energy consumption could be efficiently controlled through an effective building energy management system (BEMS).

Lincoln Property Co., a national real estate services firm that manages One Burlington Business Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, for an equity firm, turned to Schneider Electric for assistance when the owners decided to pursue Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is converting one of its laboratories into the equivalent of a small office building in order to develop and test smart software technologies designed to slash energy use in commercial buildings.

TruTech Tools Ltd., an online distributor of tools and test instruments for the HVAC and building performance markets, has announced a change in ownership. James C. and James L. Bergmann have stepped down and president and CEO, Bill Spohn, and vice president and sales manager, Eric Preston, are now the owners.