Energy savings potential from improved building controls for the US commercial building sector

The US Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored a study to determine the national savings achievable in the commercial buildings through widespread deployment of controls, elimination of faults, and use of better sensing. The study estimated savings from 34 measures in 9 building types and across 16 climates. These buildings are responsible for almost 57% of the US commercial building sector energy consumption. In addition to the individual measures, three packages of measures were created to estimate savings: (1) efficient building, (2) typical building, and (3) inefficient building. The results showed significant potential for energy savings across all building types and climates. The total site potential savings by building type aggregated across all climates for each measure varied between 0 and 16%. The total site potential savings aggregated across all building types and climates for each measure varied between 0 and 11%. The national potential site energy savings across all building types studied is 29%. Across all building types, the savings represent approximately 1393 PJ (1.32 quads) of site energy savings or 2912 PJ (2.76 quads) of primary (or source) energy savings. Extrapolating the results for other building types not analyzed as part of this study, the primary energy savings could be in the range of 4220 to 5275 PJ. For comparison, the total US primary energy consumption across all sectors of energy use was 102,762 PJ (97.4 quads) in 2015. This makes commercial building control improvements strategically important to sustained reductions in national energy consumption. To realize most of this potential savings, many gaps can be addressed through research development and deployment (RD&D), as recommended in this paper.