What AIA’s 2030 Numbers Are Telling Us

For more than a decade, AIA’s 2030 Commitment has built one of the most valuable datasets in our industry: thousands of projects designed with energy and carbon in mind from day one. This year’s By the Numbers caused me to think about what we need to realize the effort’s potential.

CBECS is No Longer a Starting Point

Around 2/3 of registered projects involved energy modeling to estimate building energy performance, because the historical benchmarks are no longer relevant. It's a well-known fact "savings over CBECS derived EUI" simply doesn't cut it anymore. Since this is the case, let's embrace energy modeling for its full potential.

Embrace Energy Modeling

So all that energy modeling reset baselines, but with no net impact to the pEUI (48% reduction vs 50% without models). The cost and time invested in energy modeling is a major opportunity to produce outscale gains. Employing models to evaluate and prioritize measures that produce the greatest savings within the budget. We've seen how well model-based design can work, and the time’s come for us to make it a central part of the design process.

Collaboration is Critical

I've had the privilege of working alongside incredible design talent and seeing the results that back this up – focusing on priority systems and approaches, and locking in choices at the conceptual design stage, produces a higher quality outcome. The biggest gains you can make in a building’s performance can be realized at the earliest stage. Increased performance can’t come from a sequential design process - the only way to get there is to change the design approach.

We Need More

AIA is doing incredible work to elevate its collective impact and shine a spotlight on projects with lasting impact. Thousands of projects designed to meet the 2030 goals have been registered, and the work of AIA to recognize those projects that embody the impact of the 2030 Commitment is changing the industry. Using those efforts, and many like them, as a new baseline for performance is essential to the future of the movement. We need long-term, well-documented exemplars that teach us what we can do better, and shape the path to get it done.

Where ProspectSV fits

We’re bringing real-world performance data and implementation guidance so the next wave of building technologies can make an impact. Get in touch with me here if you’d like to talk about this topic.

What do you think? I’d like to hear in the comments.

Read the report: AIA 2030 Commitment By the Numbers | The American Institute of Architects