President Obama signed into law the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act sponsored by Senators Portman and Shaheen.
The bill includes provisions to promote commercial building energy-use benchmarking and disclosure.
Omar Talpur, analyst for Security and Building Technologies at IHS says while it is presently unclear in the current language of the bill how commercial building energy-use information will be accessible to the general public, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) industry could benefit from such disclosure.
Talpur says, “If information on energy usage of buildings was accessible to the public, building owners and businesses that were found to use an exorbitant amount of energy could be put under pressure by environmental advocacy groups and the general public to find ways to cut power consumption. This could be an important development in promoting energy efficiency as many political leaders at the state and federal levels are unwilling to pass prescriptive and punitive energy reform measures for the fear of being branded anti-business. The bad public relations which could arise from the disclosure of energy consumption could force buildings to upgrade old and inefficient HVAC equipment at a faster rate and also invest in more comprehensive HVAC controls systems.”
Photo of HVAC equipment via Shutterstock
