For its first year of full occupancy, the nation's biggest energy miser—the nearly two-year-old 220,000-sq-ft Research Support Facility of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory—met its modeled annual energy-use targets, reports the Golden, Colo.-based NREL.
But a market-rate, low-energy-use office building doesn't happen by accident. "It's not going to work unless the owner takes responsibility both in planning and operating the building," says Jeffrey M. Baker, director of NREL operations for the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.