Utility Dive
Summary
Resilient buildings are more than just sustainably built structures — they are crucial safeguards for our communities, providing peace of mind during power outages or other disruptions by supplying essential services like heating, cooling and ventilation. More importantly, resilient buildings have the potential to lead the transformation of our electric grid, lowering emissions, increasing public safety and supporting our economy, but only if they are intelligently connected to the larger grid.
Unfortunately, two recent actions taken by the U.S. Department of Energy work against that vision and deserve far more public scrutiny than they have received to date. The first action is the new Federal Building Performance Standard that prohibits any form of on-site fossil fuel emissions from any new federal building. The second is a new federal definition of zero-emissions buildings that would require local governments nationwide to prohibit any form of on-site fossil fuel emissions or risk losing federal funding.
The more significant effect of the DOE actions is they will effectively ban more resilient building solutions like microgrids and combined heat and power, or CHP, that are among the cleanest, most versatile and efficient ways to power buildings.
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