This year has been a breakthrough for climate action in the midst of enormous challenges. As devastating impacts and warning signs mounted, city governments, businesses, real estate leaders, and individuals took on a new level of urgency to deploy solutions that will reduce carbon emissions and move us faster towards a cleaner, more energy-efficient future.
Overwhelming evidence shows that improving the energy efficiency of our buildings needs to play a central role to meet carbon reduction goals and dramatically expand the economic, social, and health benefits that efficiency delivers to people everywhere.
IMT’s top 10 most-read blog posts of 2018 highlight the many ways in which our staff is working side-by-side with the federal government, cities, real estate professionals, businesses, utilities, and regulators to collaboratively move past barriers and use every tool at our disposal to transform energy-wasting buildings into high-performance ones. From unleashing the potential of energy data and technology to moving forward on smart energy efficiency policies, to spreading innovative financing mechanisms and putting a spotlight on the people that make it all happen—our top 10 blogs touch on energy efficiency solutions and champions who meet today’s biggest climate challenges head on while saving Americans money, creating healthier indoor & outdoor spaces, and improving the communities that our buildings are an essential part of. Have you read this year’s top blogs?
- It’s Time to Put Data to Work. Building performance data offers a wealth of information—if it’s put to use.
- How Fitwel Can Get Your Building in Shape for 2018. Fitwel brings the health and wellbeing of tenants to the forefront of how high-performance buildings should be operated.
- Top Takeaways for Other Cities from Seattle’s New Benchmarking Report. Seattle is accelerating energy efficiency in the city’s buildings by improving transparency and requiring building tune-ups.
- How Cities Can Use Building Energy Data to Drive Efficiency. Washington, DC and New York City demonstrate how cities can use energy data to motivate action on efficiency, refine marketing and outreach strategies, and more accurately model building energy use.
- Going for 100% Renewables? Why Partnerships Between Cities and Utility Regulators Matter More Than Ever Before. 100% clean energy goals give new depth and significance to the relationships that cities have with energy utilities.
- The Future of Energy Efficiency Financing is Bright. By not factoring energy and water usage into mortgage financing, lenders are missing a prime opportunity to lower risks and unlock energy savings.
- What Data from Building Energy Performance Policies Offers Utilities. Streamlined operations, new efficiency rebate possibilities, enhancing the distribution grid—the potential is enormous for utility program administrators and their contractors to use the data from building performance policies and collaborate with cities.
- Chicago Launches First Building Energy Rating System in the U.S. Chicago’s four-star building energy rating system makes energy efficiency scores more publicly visible and easier to understand.
- 5 Steps to Unlock Energy Upgrades in New Markets with Green Leasing. IMT and the Rocky Mountain Institute share what the real estate industry needs to do to push green leases forward in hard-to-reach building sectors.
- Catalyzing Market Transformation: Sandra Henry. In her respective roles as a program director for Seventhwave and now Chicago’s Chief Sustainability Officer, IMT board member Sandra Henry knows what it takes to make a significant, long-lasting impact on reducing the carbon footprint of our buildings.
Added Bonus: IMT’s Top 5 Downloaded Resources of 2018
Looking to go deeper into energy performance? Check out IMT’s most-downloaded resources of 2018:
- Map: U.S. Building Benchmarking and Transparency Policies for Existing Buildings. A perennial favorite, continually updated to reflect the ever-changing policy landscape.
- Putting Data to Work: How Cities are Using Building Energy Data to Drive Efficiency. Dig into on-the-ground lessons learned on how to deploy building performance data to drive investments in efficiency.
- Green Lease Leaders: Using the Lease to Drive Innovation and Clean Energy. Check out how leading firms are successfully expanding their lease terms to include everything from onsite renewables to net-zero building operations.
- Small Business Energy Initiative Action Guide. Any chamber of commerce or small business association can use this guide to launch or improve their own energy efficiency program and unleash new savings opportunities for member businesses.
- Putting Data to Work: Impact Assessment to Estimate the Savings from Energy Efficiency Programs. Learn how cities are actively using energy benchmarking data to evaluate the impact of their efficiency policies and programs.
Want to contribute to IMT’s blog? Is there something you’d like to see us cover in 2019? Send us an email at imtweb@imt.org. We are open to feedback and always on the look-out for guest posts that offer smart analysis or real-world stories about energy efficiency and high-performance buildings.
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