Deep Green Renovation: Broad Scale Strategies for Achieving Deep Energy Savings in Existing Buildings

To examine the capacity for larger scale sustainability initiative programs to achieve retrofits on a deeper and broader scale, five case studies were developed on different programs, each operating at different scales and each aimed at improving energy efficiency in existing buildings. The programs investigated in this report are Living City Block, the Seattle 2030 District, Portland Sustainability EcoDistricts, the Chicago Climate Action Plan, and the U.S. DOE Commercial Buildings Partnership Program. The case studies examine the organizational structure, goals, strategies, financing mechanisms, and current status of each program in an effort to identify common strategies being used to overcome the barriers of deep energy retrofits. Common strategies identified across scales include collaboration between key stakeholders, aggregation of building owners within a district, providing technical assistance and sharing of best practices, incorporation of building retrofits into a broader sustainability vision, and the development a scalable framework to allow for replication.

This is a report from the AIA/AIAS COTE Research Fellowship 2011.