Reducing fossil fuel usage and greenhouse gas emissions are important goals for our industry; however, they are difficult to achieve and measure. Designers, contractors, owners and operators start with good intentions, but many new buildings ultimately have minimal energy-efficiency improvements over the buildings they replaced.

Buildings are major consumers of energy. To decrease greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption, the building industry must have an energy plan. Two years ago, Architecture 2030 took a bold, proactive step and developed a challenge for those in the building profession. The 2030 Challenge sets goals with target years for reducing the use of fossil fuels in buildings. With goals and endpoints in place, the building design, construction, operations and manufacturing teams will have time to adapt and develop practices, methods and products to reach the goals.

The Challenge defines a performance standard of 60 percent below the average for the building type. At first this would seem to be a difficult task. In reality, technologies and methods are available to achieve this standard in most building types. The Challenge includes existing buildings and encourages them to be renovated.

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