Building Efficiency:
Retrofitting the Chicago Loop--Applying a Systems Approach to Realize Scalable Energy Savings

The Chicago Climate Action Plan calls for energy retrofits of 50% of the city's commercial buildings, including many in the Loop. Multiple project partners, including Argonne National Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Sieben Energy Associates and Skidmore Owings & Merrill are collaborating to overcome current limits to widespread adoption of energy efficiency measures. The team is building a decision-making tool as a platform for helping stakeholders in the Chicago Loop better understand retrofit performance predictions. In addition, this tool will produce financial risk metrics, support impact monitoring, enable scenario projection and inform public consensus. The tool will operate at two levels:

• An aggregate level designed to strategically target efficiency initiatives that achieve large-scale energy reduction and decarbonization; and,
• An individual building level designed to allow private sector parties to develop a business case for implementation of specific retrofit strategies.

Argonne's approach surpasses the traditional view of buildings as discrete elements with individual building owners by considering aggregate performance and building interactions. This approach should foster shared efficiency and distributed energy solutions that improve the value proposition for building owners and managers. The heart of the tool is a detailed normative model of building energy flow. Building data is required to develop and test the model. All data will remain strictly confidential.

In order to collect actual building data and refine the tool based on feedback from intended users, Argonne is seeking to engage Chicago building stakeholders. Participating building owners or managers will be able to see the tool model their building(s) and guide the development of this initiative. In pilot demonstrations, the tool will be used to develop retrofit strategies and support business cases for implementation of appropriate measures.

As a result of this project, a "branded story," including lessons learned, will be available to share with the rest of the nation. Chicago is an ideal city for modeling this scalable approach because of its size, status, and representative situation within a cold climate zone.

This project is being funded by U.S. Department of Energy's Building Technologies Program.

July 2011