Rocky Mountain Institute offers a practice guide for calculating and presenting the true value of a highly efficient and sustainable building.
Energy efficiency projects in the United States and around the world are attractive investments, but receive far less attention and capital than they deserve. This is in part due to a narrow definition of their value that typically focuses on saved energy costs. Investors often ignore additional value—a robust land of untapped opportunity that sits just beneath the surface of the saved-energy-cost tip of the value iceberg—to their own financial detriment. Including all value created by highly efficient buildings when investing will enable more low-energy buildings and retrofits—particularly deep retrofits.
Deep retrofit value is the net present value of all of the benefits of a deep energy and sustainability investment. The Deep Retrofit Value Guide documents the compelling logic of how deep energy efficiency and sustainability retrofits create value and introduces RMI’s Deep Retrofit Value models, providing the foundational methodology necessary to calculate and present value to retrofit decision makers.
The Deep Retrofit Value guide is the latest instalment of resources RMI provides for driving the greater adoption of deep energy retrofits. The Retrofit Depot Guides to Managing and Identifying Opportunities for Deep Retrofits are available to plan and implement your deep retrofit. Also available are the RMI-partner Green Building Finance Consortium which houses Value Beyond Cost Savings: How to Underwrite Sustainable Properties and an extensive Research Library where you can find any study relevant to building the investment case for efficient and sustainable buildings. Visit the Retrofit Community page to view a list of other organisations that provide valuable resources for deep retrofits.