California’s Title 24 promises to reshape the construction industry

California’s recent revisions to Title 24 contain ambitious performance goals: all residential buildings must be Zero Net Energy by 2020 and commercial buildings must reach that standard by 2030. The code also applies to certain renovation projects. These changes are likely to reshape the construction industry in significant ways nationwide by:

1. Driving adoption of building energy codes.As the AEC industry works to meet California’s challenge, it will be able to translate its achievements to other regions.

2. Speeding the development of building monitoring and management technologies.Title 24 will stimulate the market for a wide variety of smart building technologies.

3. Accelerating use of on-site energy storage. Energy storage helps address the intermittency of solar and wind energy generation. It can also make the grid more resilient to outages.

4. Reducing the cost of high performance building.California’s code ensures that there will be steady demand for high performance designs and technologies. This should help to drive down costs for new, innovative products.

5. Creating competition for architects to boost performance.Net Zero Energy goals will put pressure on architects, engineers, and contractors to measure progress as they work toward achieving high efficiency results, and then to deliver on them.

(http://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/15/californias-net-zero-energy-building-will-reshape-us-construction-industry/)

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.