Benefits and Costs of Energy Standard Adoption in New Commercial Buildings: State-by-State Summaries

Energy efficiency requirements in current commercial building energy codes vary across states. Energy standards that are currently adopted by states range from ASHRAE 90.1 1999 to ASHRAE 90.1 2007. Some states do not have a code requirement for energy efficiency, leaving it up to the locality or jurisdiction to set their own requirements. The six National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publications (1147, 1148-1, 1148-2, 1148-3, and 1148-4) use the Building Industry Reporting and Design for Sustainability (BIRDS) database to analyze the impacts that the adoption of newer, more efficient commercial building energy codes would have on building energy use, operational energy costs, building life-cycle costs, and energy related carbon emissions for each state by Census Region. This study summarizes the results from the series of documents for each of the 50 states into a two-page section.