California’s Title 24 Energy Efficiency
Standards for Residential and Nonresidential Buildings regulate the energy
performance of building envelopes, lighting, water heating and HVAC
systems. Under the Warren-Alquist Act, the legislature charged the
California Energy Commission (CEC) with developing energy efficiency
building standards that were "cost effective, when taken in their
entirety, and when amortized over the economic life of the structure when
compared with historic practice." These Standards provide powerful
signals to the new construction market, and they have the power to
influence the long-term energy efficiency of the state’s energy delivery
system.
Past development and revisions of the Title
24 energy standards were based on electricity and natural gas costs that
did not account for seasonal or time-of-use patterns. Pacific Gas &
Electric Company (PG&E) sponsored a study that investigated the
feasibility of using a more accurate energy costing analysis which
accounts for variations in cost related to time of day, seasons, geography
and fuel type.
The study culminated in a proposal to
revise the performance method programs to account for these variations. An
economic model was developed and utilized to guide these revisions. The
proposed Title 24 standards for 2005 embrace this methodology. The
standards now place more value on the installation of features that affect
peak demand. In the hotter climates in California, this demand is quite
significant.
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