Domestic water heating (DHW) accounts for a significant share of multifamily building energy use, especially in California's coastal towns. While each new construction project will have a different ratio of energy end uses, one can look at the existing building stock to get an idea of how much is attributable to DHW systems. According to the Department of Energy's Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), DHW accounted for around 32% of overall energy use for existing multifamily units in the late 1990's.

The Multifamily Design Guide For Energy Efficiency provides a summary of resources, methods, and tools to assist the design community in building more energy efficient multifamily buildings, which are increasingly popular in California.

Historically, multifamily residential housing developments had few incentives or disincentives to incorporate high efficiency design features and appliances into their projects.

Interest is growing throughout California and the United States in new homes designed to provide comfortable living environments with lower energy consumption and operating costs.

The Skylighting Guidelines are a collection of documents intended to help architects and engineers use skylights to maximum advantage in commercial and industrial buildings.