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This fact sheet summarizes recommendations for designing new office buildings that result in 50% less energy use than conventional designs meeting minimum code requirements. The recommendations are drawn from the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small to Medium Office Buildings, an ASHRAE publication that provides comprehensive recommendations for designing low-energy-use office buildings with gross floor areas up to 100,000 ft2.

Designed as a stand-alone document, this fact sheet provides key principles and a set of prescriptive design recommendations appropriate for smaller
office buildings with insufficient budgets to fully implement best practices for integrated design and optimized performance. The recommendations have undergone a thorough analysis and review process through ASHRAE, and have been deemed an easily replicable combination of measures to achieve 50% savings in the greatest number of office buildings.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) goal is to expand our leadership as a state-of the-art laboratory that supports innovative research, development, and commercialization of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies that address the nation’s energy and environmental needs. Fundamental to this goal is NREL’s commitment to sustainability--operating in a manner that balances environmental, economic, and social values in the delivery of our mission. At NREL, sustainability is integral to both our research and operations. NREL is committed to demonstrating federal leadership in sustainability, working to continuously improve our performance and lead by example. This document provides an updated NREL site sustainability plan for 2014.

This guide primarily applies to facility managers and energy managers of large existing office buildings larger than 100,000 square feet, but also includes considerations for small and medium office buildings. By presenting general project planning guidance as well as financial payback metrics for the most common energy efficiency measures, this guide provides a practical roadmap for effectively planning and implementing performance improvements for existing buildings.

The Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Office Buildings is intended to provide a simple approach for contractors and designers who create office buildings up to 20,000 ft2. Application of the recommendations in the Guide should result in small office buildings with 30% energy savings when compared to those same office buildings designed to the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999.

This paper introduces a classification system for net-zero energy buildings (ZEB) based on the renewable sources a building uses.