The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the release of the third installment in a series of four 50% Advanced Energy Design Guides (AEDGs). This latest guide will help architects, engineers, and contractors design and build highly efficient retail buildings, helping to save energy and cut store operational costs.
The 50% AEDG series provides a practical approach for designers and builders of retail stores, and other major commercial building types, to achieve 50% energy savings compared to the building energy code used in many parts of the nation. These commercial building guides support President Obama's goal to reduce energy use in commercial buildings 20% by 2020.
The Advanced Energy Design Guide for 50% energy savings in retail buildings is now available for download here.
Beyond helping builders achieve efficiency exceeding the current energy code, the AEDGs also provide climate-specific recommendations to incorporate today's off-the-shelf energy efficient building products. These recommendations help designers and builders choose advanced building assemblies, highly efficient heating and cooling systems, and incorporate other energy-saving measures such as daylighting and associated control systems.
Additionally, efficiency measures found in the guides can be used in the development of future commercial building energy codes.
The 50% Advanced Energy Design Guide series is being developed through a partnership with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), American Institute of Architects (AIA), U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA). The Retail Buildings guide is the third installment in the 50% series, and follows the guides for small and medium office buildings and K-12 schools released in 2011. The final 50% savings guide for major commercial building types-large hospitals-is also in progress. BD+C
Related Stories
| Apr 8, 2011
SHW Group appoints Marjorie K. Simmons as CEO
Chairman of the Board Marjorie K. Simmons assumes CEO position, making SHW Group the only firm in the AIA Large Firm Roundtable to appoint a woman to this leadership position
| Apr 5, 2011
Zaha Hadid’s civic center design divides California city
Architect Zaha Hadid is in high demand these days, designing projects in Hong Kong, Milan, and Seoul, not to mention the London Aquatics Center, the swimming arena for the 2012 Olympics. But one of the firm’s smaller clients, the city of Elk Grove, Calif., recently conjured far different kinds of aquatic life when members of the City Council and the public chose words like “squid,” “octopus,” and “starfish” to describe the latest renderings for a proposed civic center.
| Apr 5, 2011
Are architects falling behind on BIM?
A study by the National Building Specification arm of RIBA Enterprises showed that 43% of architects and others in the industry had still not heard of BIM, let alone started using it. It also found that of the 13% of respondents who were using BIM only a third thought they would be using it for most of their projects in a year’s time.
| Apr 5, 2011
Top 10 Buildings: Women in Architecture
Making selections of top buildings this week led to a surprising discovery about the representation of women in architecture, writes Tom Mallory, COO and co-founder, OpenBuildings.com. He discovered that finding female-created architecture, when excluding husband/wife teams, is extremely difficult and often the only work he came across was akin to interior design.
| Apr 5, 2011
What do Chengdu, Lagos, and Chicago have in common?
They’re all “world middleweight cities” that are likely to become regional megacities (10 million people) by 2025—along with Dongguan, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Wuhan (China); Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo); Jakarta (Indonesia); Lahore (Pakistan); and Chennai (India), according to a new report from McKinsey Global Institute: “Urban World: Mapping the economic power of cities”.