Definition: Building Type differentiates commercial buildings in categories based on similar energy usage.
Inclusion: Commercial Building types includes buildings with less than half floor space for residential, industrial, or agricultural uses.
CBECS Role: The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey CBECS collects data and creates categories like stores, restaurants, warehouses, schools, hospitals, etc.
Importance of Knowing Building Type
Understanding Specific Energy Consumption:
Recognize your building type's energy consumption, expenditure, and control strategies.
Examples of different building types have different schedules and energy needs:
Offices: Daily energy consumption, usually 7 am-5 pm.
Schools: Similar to offices but with seasonal variations.
Religious Spaces: Irregular daily schedule, peak use once a week.
Knowing what changes between types helps designers and engineers accommodate loads in energy simulations and make better decisions
Comparing with CBECS 2003 Data Set:
Architecture 2030 Challenge: Led to zero-emissions in the global building sector. In 2006, Arch2030 initiated the 2030 challenge, which led to a zero-emissions movement in the global building sector.
Adoption: Has since been adopted by architectural design firms, states, cities, counties, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the International Union of Architects, US Conference of Mayors, and the China Accord.
Standardized Metrics: Helps track progress and meet the 2030 Challenge.
Industry Benchmarks: Metrics from CBECS 2003 set benchmarks for energy use, cooling and heating loads.
Ever-Evolving Code: Guarantees a common baseline as codes change.
See what building types are available inside our platform in this article and image below.
Pro Tip: analysis.tool currently has 8 automated building types and will continue adding custom building types as they are requested by our users. Also analysis.tool uses AIA's Zerotool which allows our users to directly report their project energy reports to Arch2030 2030 Challenge Database.