Selecting Energy Efficiency Measures Beyond 2012 IECC for Utility Programs, Stretch Codes and Base Codes

This paper uses the examples of the 2014 Vermont Stretch Code, the City of Boulder Energy Code, and the Advanced Buildings: New Construction Guide, a utility program of NBI, to illustrate the interconnected nature of the measure development process. [...] Shown in Figure 2 below is the interplay in the cycles of codes that lead from utility programs, such as the ones based on the New Construction Guide, that were the source of many significant revisions of the 2009 IECC that led to the 2012 IECC. [...] Second, we will look at how the State of Vermont, and its partner the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, used some of the measures in the Guide and added other sources, such as the next version of the 2015 IEEC, to create a stretch code framework for Vermont. [...] NBI also leveraged its involvement in the development of next-generation codes such as the International Green Construction Code (IgCC), the 2015 edition of the IECC, and the 2013 edition of ASHRAE’s Standard 90.1 and work on the Massachusetts stretch code. [...] The tool is capable of analyzing the energy impact of various combinations of the above factors in batches of tens of thousands of modeling runs in a single application.