Revised ASHRAE standard gets serious on building decarbonisation NZ’s Building Code would benefit from this work, especially on EUI

ASHRAE in the USA is really focusing on building decarbonisation, finally. ASHRAE Journal March 2024 contains a really readable summary of the changes to ASHRAE Standard 100-2024, Energy and Emissions Building Performance Standard for Existing Buildings.

This amounts to a deep retrofit of the standard, which now will address both energy emissions (via Energy Use Intensity, EUI) and carbon emissions (via greenhouse gas emissions, GHG). They have also clarified that the EUI metric is gross not net—so no get-out-of-jail-free card for adding heaps of renewables. Efficiency first!

I know MBIE is off doing their best for us with Building for Climate Change but I’d suggest that the wording in much of this ASHRAE document would suit New Zealand’s revised Building Code very well. Especially so for the EUI targets, which are expensive to develop for existing buildings. Of course the GHG metrics would need to be changed to match New Zealand’s grid and discourage any on-site fossil fuels.