NEW BUILDINGS INSTITUTE INC

NBI's vision is a built environment that makes a positive contribution to a sustainable society through dramatic improvements in energy performance. Our current efforts are working to provide the policy and program direction and promote design practices and technologies that will result in buildings that are better for people and the environment. Success will mean the transformation of new construction practices and renovation of the current building stock to the highest degree of efficiency possible resulting in substantive reductions in carbon emissions from the built environment.

NBI strategies for creating market shifts start with thought leadership and establishing a theoretical pathway for change. This concept is further supported and proven with research to verify feasibility and define action steps to effectively achieve the intended outcomes. NBI staff also develops audience-specific tools and resources that will fuel the change we want to see and locks in that variation with policy development and adoption on the national and local levels.

NBI acts as an honest, third-party broker bridging between the energy and building industries. We do not have members that drive our agenda. Instead, we are governed by a board of industry thought leaders which directs the organization to work in areas of critical need. Our staff of technical and policy experts develop and deliver the basis for proving feasibility of technology applications and design strategies that reduce energy use all the way to zero net energy and advise local jurisdictions on the codes and policies that will drive such projects. One of NBI's strongest attributes is that we are highly collaborative. By working with commercial building market players—governments, utilities, energy efficiency advocates and building professionals—we are able to most effectively remove barriers to energy efficiency

NBI has had many accomplishments, but our largest indicators of impact have been the transformations in best practice building design and construction that have enabled substantially better energy performance in buildings and presented a business case that justifies energy efficiency investments beyond cost savings from reduced energy consumption. Early research by NBI set the stage for quantifying non-energy benefits in terms of higher worker productivity and satisfaction resulting from green, high performance building practices that allowed for more comfortable workspaces with higher levels of natural light. NBI also pioneered a study that spotlighted the need for the design community to address building energy performance in occupancy rather than relying solely on predictive design models. We have been a leader in advancing integrated design processes to achieve high energy efficiency and succeeded in passing the largest code stringency increase in the history of the International Energy Conservation Code. Most recently, NBI has seen growing market adoption of zero net energy buildings—a concept of ultra-low energy buildings coupled with clean, renewable resources—that we have championed from the beginning. But the building sector is large and diffuse. For every practitioner or policymaker that we touch, there are 10 others to reach out to. NBI's future work is focused on moving through the innovation diffusion curve—from innovators to early adopters to the mainstream—in order to achieve our vision of the built environment.