ASHRAE Journal - May 2020 - 29

ROUNDTABLE

clearer which systems addressed by Standard 90.1
should be included in functional testing.
Another signiﬁcant addition is that when commissioning is required, the commissioning authority
must now complete a design review to verify compliance with appropriate 90.1 requirements. Note that
a national survey of commissioning ﬁrms found that
only four out of 10 ﬁrms regularly included energy
code compliance veriﬁcation in their commissioning
scope.1
The functional performance testing, veriﬁcation,
and commissioning reporting is now clearly spelled
out in Section 4.2.5 so it is uniform across all technical
disciplines and consistent with ASHRAE Standard 202.
General requirements for FPT, veriﬁcation, and commissioning providers are also included, along with the
requirement that they not be directly involved in the
design or installation of the building systems.
Informative Appendix H provides a cross reference of
90.1 commissioning requirements and documentation
to the standard ﬂow of commissioning work, so commissioning providers can be clear about what 90.1 speciﬁcally requires. The purpose is to ensure that speciﬁc
items required by Standard 90.1 are included in the
testing or commissioning process.

Reference

1. Hart, Reid, and M. I. Rosenberg. "Are Energy Controls
Delivering Real Savings?" In Proceedings of the 2018 ACEEE
Summer Study on Energy Efﬁciency in Buildings. Paciﬁc Grove, CA:
American Council for an Energy-Efﬁcient Economy (ACEEE), 2018.

Q4: What is the projected energy savings of buildings
constructed to the 2019 standard compared to 2016?
Michael Rosenberg: PNNL uses the Progress Indicator
(PI) methodology to track the national impact of
Standard 90.1 throughout the three-year development
cycle, and periodically reports the results to Standing
Standards Project Committee (SSPC) 90.1. The PI applies
the requirements of two different editions of the standard-the new edition compared to the previous-to a
suite of established prototype energy models,1 including 16 building types in the 16 ASHRAE climate zones
found in the U.S. The savings are computed and the
results aggregated across building types and climate
zones using weighting factors based on new-building
permit data to provide a single national savings number.
The PI results for 2019 show 5.0% energy savings and

4.7% energy cost savings from 90.1-2019 compared to
90.1-2016.

Reference

1. DOE. "Commercial Prototype Building Models." U.S.
Department of Energy. www.energycodes.gov/development/
commercial/prototype_models

Q5: What is the timeframe for the 2019 edition of
Standard 90.1 to be adopted on the federal level and
when can we expect states and jurisdictions to adopt
it?
Michael Rosenberg: The U.S. DOE is required by
federal law (the Energy Conservation and Production
Act [ECPA], as amended) to issue a Determination as
to whether the latest edition of ASHRAE Standard 90.1
will improve energy efﬁciency in commercial buildings.
DOE has 12 months to publish its Determination in the
Federal Register, triggered by each new edition of the
Standard. Standard 90.1-2019 was published in October
2019, so the goal is to complete the Determination
by October 2020. The same federal law, ECPA, then
provides states two years from the publication of the
Determination to review and update their energy code,
including demonstration that the state code meets
or exceeds the provisions of the updated edition of
Standard 90.1 (in this case Standard 90.1-2019).
Q6: What are some of the challenges and opportunities that you expect for the 2022 edition of Standard
90.1?
Michael Rosenberg: The biggest challenge is creating
a consensus standard that continues to reduce energy
use in buildings with each new edition. In many cases
requirements are reaching the limits of technological feasibility or cost effectiveness. There is more room
for efﬁciency but it is becoming increasingly difﬁcult
to increase stringency without also signiﬁcantly limiting design ﬂexibility (or choice). For example, some
design options that an engineer or architect favors may
no longer meet the prescriptive path (such as highly
glazed façades). As this is becoming more common, the
SSPC has increasingly focused on the performance paths
(Performance Rating Method and Energy Cost Budget)
and system efﬁciency in Standard 90.1 to maintain
design ﬂexibility. To accommodate this transition, the
SSPC needs to ensure the performance paths are robust,
not overly complicated for the designers, and do not
M AY 2020

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ASHRAE Journal - May 2020

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