Design Briefs: Options & Opportunities
Not all energy-efficiency measures are appropriate for all building types, but some are especially useful for particular buildings. This Design Brief reminds designers and builders of opportunities they should consider in each of their projects. Summary: When focus is placed on the largest energy uses in a particular type of building, incorporating pertinent enhancements in a standard design can readily improve energy efficiency...

Design Briefs: Integrated Building Design
Using the integrated energy design approach, designers can cost-effectively lower building operating costs while improving workers’ comfort and boosting productivity. Summary: The integrated energy design process helps building owners and designers to economically reduce building operating expenses, while improving comfort and productivity for the building's occupants...

Design Briefs: Building Simulation
A few building simulation runs early in a project can lead to design solutions that, though they appear simple, significantly improve building energy performance. Summary: Computerized building energy performance simulation is a powerful implement for the virtual toolboxes of architects, engineers, and developers...

Design Briefs: Daylighting
Using fundamental components of the Daylighting Designer’s Toolkit, designers can improve the visual environment, create a higher-quality space, and lower energy costs for buildings. Summary: Using fundamental components of the Daylighting Designer's Toolkit, designers can improve the visual environment, create a higher-quality space, and lower energy costs for buildings...

Online Tools: EDR Charette
EDR Charette is an online tool that allows you to quickly investigate the energy impacts of various design scenarios on a typical building, and then review the analysis graphically in an easy to understand web-based format. It enables you to quickly "draw" building components with drop down menus, and estimate how different design choices will affect energy use, energy costs, and the surrounding environment...

Software: eQUEST
eQUEST® is a sophisticated, yet easy to use building energy use analysis tool which provides professional-level results with an affordable level of effort. This freeware tool was designed to allow you to perform detailed analysis of today's state-of-the-art building design technologies using today's most sophisticated building energy use simulation techniques but without requiring extensive experience in the "art" of building performance modeling...

Case Studies: High Quality Learning Environment Yields 38 Percent Energy Savings
Students enrolled at the Georgina Blach Intermediate School (Blach School) in Los Altos, California, walked into a newly remodeled, high-performance school facility in the fall of 2002. The remodeled Blach School – a demonstration project sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric Company – showed how energy- and resource-efficient technologies could be successfully incorporated in a school renovation project...

Case Studies: Skylighting in Schools - A Healthy Advantage
Older schools in this district were built with few windows, and students complained they felt "claustrophobic." Based on these comments, as well as concerns about energy efficiency, the school board decided that natural light was essential to the learning experience...

Case Studies: An Integrated Campus Benefits From Its Desert Environment
Situated near a lake in the desert above the Mojave River, the new Learning Resource Center at Victor Valley Community College provides more reading and study areas, book stacks, conference rooms and offices to the college’s existing library. The building’s form (including its central skylight, roof monitors, and angled shading devices) provides dramatic natural lighting in the addition’s reading areas...

The Newsletter: Let the sun shine!
Let the Sun Shine! Can we shine some daylight on kids test scores and save energy at the same time? A recent study by a California energy consulting firm suggests that children learn faster and do better on standardized tests in classrooms with more natural daylight...