It’s very possible to achieve a high performance envelope on both new construction and existing buildings, but issues unique to renovating existing building envelopes will continue to create greater opportunity in new building design and construction. Now let’s think about how these high performance envelopes apply to new building design and construction vs. Maintaining healthy indoor air quality and providing more resilience to weather events are also growing needs for buildings, with building envelopes playing a key role in achieving these goals.Building envelopes are increasingly being approached as an integrated building system that works together, rather than a series of individual components.Building Envelope Commissioning (BECx) is growing, and includes incremental analysis and review work during building design, and the use of envelope mockups and increased inspections and testing during construction.General contractors are becoming motivated to build high performance envelopes due to their desire for increased quality assurance and reduced warranty call back costs.Advances in HVAC and lighting systems energy efficiency have been achieved and are now more commonly used in projects, so building owners, design teams, and utilities are looking to building envelopes for incremental gains in energy efficiency.Increased emphasis on high performance building envelopes is a major focus of the fast growing passive house building certification standard for commercial and residential buildings, developed and managed in North America by PHIUS.Building envelopes are estimated to account for 30% of primary energy use in the USA, and envelope air leaks alone can waste 20% of the energy used to heat and cool a building.Market factors that are focusing this momentum even more on designing and building high performance commercial building envelopes include: Utility companies are consistently required to meet energy savings goals from their regulators.Sustainable building initiatives and guidelines such as Architecture 2030 and LEED have been growing interest in more energy efficient buildings for over a decade.Commercial buildings alone account for 18% of all primary energy use in the USA, and 16 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions.Work to increase the energy efficiency of commercial buildings has been underway for many years now, driven by market factors that include: Market Dynamics Shaping Building Envelopes But, if you consider key dynamics of the building design and construction market and the benefits provided by high performance envelopes, I think you’ll agree – and also see the growing opportunity this trend generates for innovation and sales growth for building envelope product manufacturers and service providers. That may seem like a pretty bold statement. High performance building envelopes are the new frontier in energy efficiency for commercial buildings. While I’ve worked across both residential and commercial buildings, I’ll focus here on commercial building envelopes. ![]() My work has included extensive market assessments, customer research, and strategic marketing, and provides the foundation for this blog post. I’ve had the good fortune (and fun) of working with a variety of building envelope products and technologies over the last several years, from those already established to new, innovative technologies - at large companies, start up companies, and Argonne National Laboratory. It includes the exterior walls, roof, foundations, and lowest level floor slab. Imagine high performance building envelopes that are so well designed and built that they save enough energy to heat, cool, and power 53 million homes for one year!īefore I get into more detail, some of you may ask what exactly is a building envelope? The building envelope is simply the physical barrier that encloses the building and separates the building’s interior from the exterior environment. My goal is to help define important changes happening in this segment with the goal of highlighting growth opportunities for manufacturers and service providers who support the design and construction of building envelopes.īuilding envelopes are at a transformational and exciting stage, both in residential and commercial building design and construction. ![]() Note: This article is intended as an overview of the evolving building envelope segment within the building design and construction market.
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