Deep Retrofits

Existing buildings are full of energy efficiency opportunities waiting to be realized. While some savings are obvious and easy to get, often design teams can realize much deeper savings at little or no added capital cost—and sometimes at less.
Deep energy retrofits improve the economics of efficiency, and achieve bigger energy savings and other benefits at equal or lower cost, driving much larger savings (more than 50 percent) than conventional, shallow retrofits.

Key Aspects to the Deep Retrofit Process

• Timing the deep retrofit with planned capital improvements, breaks in occupancy, and other situations
• Applying integrative design principles
• Using advanced energy modeling, auditing and life cycle cost analysis methods and tools
• Metering and commissioning to verify savings and to continually improve. 

Buildings are systems, and integrative, whole-building strategies recognize how one kind of efficiency gain can affect other building systems and attributes. For example, improvements to the building envelope can reduce mechanical system loads and equipment, which in turn may increase usable floor area. Simply by recognizing how systems are interrelated, design teams can cause small improvements to cascade into substantially larger benefits.