New Buildings Institute

Leadership and market development: nbi's research, convenings, education, and thought leadership on "getting to zero" focuses on driving scale in building decarbonization including energy efficiency improvements. During the 2022-2023 fiscal year, nbi broadened its market development and ongoing engagement with critical market audiences through collaboration and partnership with professionals in the building industry. Nbi's research offers proof and provides examples to show that net zero energy performance goals are achievable. Successes and lessons learned are shared with designers and owners through energy efficiency programs and advocacy groups. (continued on sch o)a low-carbon specification that nbi developed is being used by a pace financing firm as a pathway for developers to pursue carbon reductions in their projects. Nbi hosted several public-facing awareness building events including webinars that touched thousands of people and social medial campaigns that garnered over a million impressions on social media. These efforts will help build industry capability to deliver on the upcoming policies calling for net zero outcomes in Buildings.

Building innovation:nbi's building innovation program focuses on technical research and analysis to advance emerging technology and best practices for accelerating building decarbonization. This work advances programs and practices seeking to enhance energy efficiency and low carbon outcomes in the built environment and develops tools and guidance to provide critical support for building owners, practitioners, utilities, governments, and others.examples of activities include building science research, emerging technology demonstration and validation, best practices guidance, technical tools, and thought leadership. Key initiatives under this program area include the gridoptimal Buildings initiative, (continued on sch o)focused on building-grid integration, and the advanced water heating initiative, focused on heat pump water heater market transfomration. In the 2022-2023 year, nbi collaborated with over hundreds of companies and organizations to support these initiatives and advance equitable building decarbonization for people and the planet.

Codes and policies:energy codes continue to be a crucial lever in transforming markets for high performance Buildings. Nbi's work in this program area included strengthening model building energy codes and increasing their use and usefulness. We also worked on developing the necessary thought leadership to overcome critical issues that are hindering code advancement and create the technical basis for progressive code and policy approaches such as decarbonized and stretch codes, as well as building performance standards. Nbi worked directly with leading local jurisdictions to implement these advanced code and policy strategies as well as to develop code and policy roadmaps. (continued on sch o)nbi also worked to support the expansion of codes and policy development to take a more holistic view of climate focusing increasingly on carbon neutrality, health and resilience. Several jurisdictions are developing zero energy and zero carbon roadmaps that set objectives for each code cycle, moving stringency along a path to ultimately reach these performance levels. Nbi worked successfully at the national level on model codes and standards, and in several states and cities including California, Colorado, Illinois and New york.