The National Institute of Building Sciences will gather input from building industry participants about their commercial building data needs at a hearing Monday, July 18 in Washington, D.C. The hearing is in response to recent news that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) will not release the results of its 2007 Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), or complete its 2011 survey.
The hearing will be open to all parties interested in presenting their views on the state of commercial building related data, current and anticipated data needs, existing sources of data and potential future data sources. Participants may submit either written or oral testimony, or both.
Many efforts within the building community rely on the CBECS statistics, in particular the EnergyStar program overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy. A number of industry initiatives reference EnergyStar as a baseline.
Because the EnergyStar program compares a building to its peers, the value of making comparisons will diminish as the underlying CBECS data becomes older, according to the National Institute of Building Sciences.
The Institute announced it would establish a High-Performance Building Data Collection Initiative to potentially fill the CBECS data void. The initiative would allow the building community to still obtain the building energy data necessary to achieve national objectives for high-performance buildings. The New Buildings Institute and the National Environmental Balancing Bureau are both providing support for the effort.
Three Institute representatives will preside over the hearing proceedings. Gordon Holness, a current member of the Institute Board of Directors, is past president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE); Ron Skaggs, a past chairman of the Institute Board, is past president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA); and Henry Green, current president of the Institute, is past president of the International Code Council.
Interested parties can download the procedures for the hearing, indicate their intent to testify and find out how to submit written testimony by visiting the Institute’s HPB Data Collection webpage. The hearing itself will be open to all interested parties to attend.
The Institute will generate a report of the findings following the event. To sign up to receive an emailed copy of the report when it becomes available, contact [email protected] with “HPB Findings” in the subject line.