High Performance Buildings

The commercial buildings market is very complex, with wildly divergent ownership, management control, and building characteristics. Buildings range from strip malls to office towers to convention centers to big box retail stores. Ownership could be local government, merchant builders (who build and then sell), local family businesses, international corporations, and fast food franchises. Each ownership category makes decisions very differently from the others. Some commercial buildings are incredibly complex, some buildings are cookie cutter simple and repetitive.

Massachusetts has been number one on the ACEEE Energy Efficiency Scorecard for eight years in a row. It is important that we celebrate this massive achievement. It’s also important to recognize that we have the tools, the state leadership, and the grassroots manpower to do better.

15,600 hours.

This is the amount of time, on average, that a student spends in school by the time he or she graduates from high school (Harvard report). Other than their homes, today’s students spend more time at school than anywhere else. We know this for a fact - yet we still overlook the importance of the physical school environment.

As an organization evolves, sometimes so must its surroundings. Life and routine seem to have settled in (for the most part) these days, but back in early May, things were the opposite of routine. We uprooted ourselves out of the space we called home for four great, important years that saw milestones like our 20^th anniversary, and embarked on a journey in search of a new beginning.