This past week, the Commercial Buildings Integration (CBI) program, along with our four other sister programs in the Building Technologies Office (BTO), hosted one of our most important events of the year – the Peer Review. 

The annual Peer Review serves as a powerful vehicle for our programs to receive unvarnished feedback on the performance of our projects and fosters an environment of collaboration among stakeholders.

At this year’s Peer Review, we had the chance to provide a summary update on CBI’s program progress as well as more in-depth reviews of several of our projects – from the Commercial Building Energy Asset Score to the LA Cleantech Incubator, or from the M&V 2.0 project to Advanced Lighting and Controls demonstration.

Across the board, we are making good progress, and the numbers are impressive. 

• Our HIT Catalyst initiative, the cornerstone of our technology deployment efforts, is saving nearly $60 million in energy thanks to the success of three technology campaigns (Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking, Advanced RTUs, and Interior Lighting), 20 completed or ongoing technology demonstrations, and two innovation challenges.
   
• Our anchor market engagement effort – the Better Buildings Challenge – is saving its 250+ commercial partners nearly a billion dollars in energy and has provided more than 40 new resources for our 200+ Better Buildings Alliance members who represent 11 billion square feet of real estate.
   
• The Commercial Building Energy Asset Score has scored more than 850 buildings representing more than 80 million square feet of real estate. We also partnered with 21 leading industry groups who are committed to working more collaboratively with us to advance the tool’s deployment.
   
• CBI launched the SEED Platform Collaborative earlier this year, partnering with 10 cities, one county and one state, providing these jurisdictions with more than $1.5 million in critical technical assistance to successfully adopt and integrate the SEED Platform. The Collaborative also facilitates the development of a stronger peer community and better access to companies who can help them use data effectively to improve the efficiency of buildings in their communities.
   
• The Building Performance Database has eclipsed 850,000 building records, making it the nation’s largest publicly accessible dataset of information about the physical and operational characteristics of real buildings.
   
• CBI is poised this year to publish a guidance document with zero energy design strategies geared toward the educational sector, specifically the K-12 schools market.

In addition, we also took advantage of the 2016 Peer Review to present our ambitious goals framework across BTO and solicit additional feedback from experts in the buildings community. By 2030, CBI is committed to reducing energy use intensity (EUI) in commercial buildings by 25%. Our interim goal for 2025 is to help market leaders reduce energy used in their existing buildings by 30% and build new buildings that consume 50% less energy than 2010 levels. We also detailed the full gamut of our program level goals and activities that we will seek to achieve by 2020. This goals framework has been critical in helping CBI map out how it intends to continue to drive market transformation and accelerate new efficiency technologies in the commercial buildings market.

Again, none of this is possible without a community of dedicated stakeholders and partners. CBI is very fortunate and thankful for all those who participated in this year’s Peer Review and supported the event with their invaluable input – all of which ultimately helps us make our program stronger and more impactful.

We look forward to seeing you and doing it all again next year!

Uptake: The CBI Blog