Notice of Intent: Commercial Buildings and Energy Code Field Studies

The purpose of this Notice of Intent is to provide potential applicants advance notice that the Building Technologies Office, on behalf of the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), intends to issue a FOA titled, “Commercial Buildings and Energy Code Field Studies”. This FOA supports DOE’s continued interest in providing tools and data to help local governments, utilities, industry, design and construction professionals and other entities better understand the impact of energy codes and how to most effectively increase energy and cost savings. The Building Energy Codes Program (BECP) issued a residentially-focused FOA in 2014 (DE-FOA-0000953: Strategies to Increase Residential Energy Code Compliance Rates and Measure Results) which is still underway. The current FOA expands the field-based concepts developed in the residential FOA to the much more diverse commercial sector. In particular, DOE is seeking to develop and test a methodology for identifying the commercial energy code requirements that can provide the maximum cost-effective energy and cost savings through increased compliance. DOE has done pilot work in this area which will serve as the basis for the requirements in this FOA. At the same time, there has been very little scientifically-based research conducted on commercial energy codes; DOE therefore anticipates that information gathered during the FOA work will lead to new thinking and approaches which will be incorporated into the project. The full Notice of Intent DE-FOA-0001544 is posted in the FOA Documents section of this NOI. NO APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED THROUGH THIS NOTICE. Please do not submit questions or respond to this Notice of Intent. Prospective applicants to the FOA should begin developing partnerships, formulating ideas, and gathering data in anticipation of the issuance of this FOA. It is anticipated that this FOA will be posted to EERE Exchange in or around the last calendar quarter in 2016.