Buildings are the ultimate end-users for 68 percent of coal and 55 percent of natural gas in the United States.

A huge opportunity exists to mitigate fossil fuel consumption in this sector, and it has yet to be exploited.

Retrofitting the World’s Most Famous Office Building
A year after RMI and our partners completed an award-winning retrofit design of the Empire State Building, many other large commercial properties are lining up to follow in its footsteps. (Watch video)

Building on our success with the Empire State Building, RMI is taking retrofits to an even deeper level, finding ways to achieve bigger energy savings faster and applying them to a greater number and wider variety of building types.

Under this new initiative, called RetroFit™, RMI aims to encourage the retrofit of the U.S. commercial building stock to use, on average, at least 50 percent less energy by 2050 via the wide adoption of deep energy retrofits that save far more energy, even more profitably, than today’s normal practices. (Help us reach our goal.)

RetroFit Depot

Visit RMI's new online resource for building owners, managers and energy service practitioners to discover the business case, best practices and tools for undertaking deep energy efficiency retrofits. RetroFit Depot offers case studies, free energy modeling tools and a step-by-step overview of the deep retrofit process to help owners and energy service practitioners profitably pursue deep retrofits.

Approach
RMI will work with building or portfolio owners who control and influence large amounts of commercial real estate to test new approaches to ”deeper and cheaper” retrofits in their own building.

 We also plan to work with a select group of “service providers” (design teams, property managers, and ESCOs) to develop the skills and service packages required to deliver the potential level of energy savings that retrofits need to achieve at scale.

RMI is currently identifying partners for the following additional projects:

Project to Portfolio
A franchise business presents opportunities for developing a replicable model of energy efficiency retrofits across a portfolio of similar building types, such as car dealerships, supermarkets or box retail. Through our analysis and audit process, retrofits are standardized, making each building retrofit faster and cheaper.

Package Retrofits
Sometimes a few basic measures create deep savings. This project approach takes a set of measures and applies them repeatedly to a number of commercial buildings with similar characteristics.

This approach is specifically useful for a commonly underserved retrofit—smaller buildings with individual ownership patterns. This can fruitfully be combined with utility demand-side incentive programs to address financing barriers.

Optimizing ESCOs
The purpose of this project is to re-vamp the way energy service companies operate to include whole systems design for much greater energy savings (>50 percent) in ‘ripe’ buildings. The project encourages more transparent contractual guidance to ensure industry reputation and owner value. This “service provider” enhancement project has the potential to greatly enhance the quantity, quality and ability in the market to provide deep, cost effective building retrofits.

Contact us to inquire about working with RMI on its RetroFit initiative or to speak to an expert about our work.