California’s Title 24 promises to reshape the construction industry

California’s recent revisions to Title 24 put in place ambitious performance goals: All residential buildings must be Zero Net Energy by 2020. These changes promise to reshape the construction industry in significant ways nationwide by:

1.  Driving adoption of building energy codes. As the construction industry rises to California’s challenge, it will also build the capacity to achieve similar results elsewhere.
2.  Speeding the development of building monitoring and management technologies. Title 24 revisions will create a large market for an array of “smart building” technologies.
3.  Accelerating on-site energy storage. Storage is intended to help address the intermittency of renewable energy generation, and can also improve the resilience of the electricity grid overall.
4.  Reducing the cost of high performance building. California’s code provides market certainty for high performance buildings and related technologies.
5.  Creating competition for architects around performance. Net Zero Energy goals will put pressure on architects, engineers, and builders to deliver expected results — and to measure their progress at every step.

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