Building for life

When it comes to satisfying the world’s almost insatiable appetite for energy, nothing beats energy efficiency. While the efficiency of commercial buildings has improved significantly in recent decades, the building industry has only begun to tap the energy reserves trapped in underperforming facilities.

Trane, a 100-year global provider of indoor comfort solutions and services, foresees a wide range of groundbreaking innovations in high-performance building technologies, operating practices and intelligent building services that will create better, healthier, more comfortable, and more productive indoor environments.

Modern technologies, practices boost building performance

Building owners and operators can realize a wide range of benefits by adopting high-performance building technologies and operating principles that are widely available today. New technologies and improved energy-efficiency practices enable commercial buildings to achieve higher levels of energy efficiency, better overall performance, lower lifecycle costs and a smaller environmental footprint.

According to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and European Union Institute for Energy and Transport (IET), high performance buildings use 20-30 percent less energy and cost as much as 50 percent less to operate over their full occupied life as compared to conventionally equipped and operated buildings.

More energy efficient building systems and the use of a wide range of energy conservation measures have helped drive down the energy intensity of commercial buildings by 8.5 percent over the last three decades, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. But the inventory of existing buildings has just scratched the surface when it comes to realizing the full potential of energy efficiency to help reduce global energy consumption and our environmental impact.

McKinsey and Co. research concludes that the U.S. has the opportunity to reduce its non-transportation energy use by 23 percent through improved energy efficiency. This would eliminate more than $1.2 trillion in wasted spending and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 1.1 gigatons, which is the equivalent of taking every passenger vehicle off U.S. roadways, the research concluded.

[source: http://sustainableindustries.com/articles/2013/04/building-life]