Although commercial and institutional buildings vary greatly from one to another in size, use, and type of construction, there are general recommendations for creating energy-efficient commercial buildings in a hot and humid climate.

This Life-Cycle Energy Performance Framework for Cities provides policymakers a tool to look across building codes, incentive and utility programs, and post-occupancy/operations policies, to identify potential policies and triggers that can be deployed to impact building energy use.

Building performance standards are a promising approach aiming to achieve a highly effective, long-term, technology-neutral method to improve building performance. This brief explores the power and potential of performance mandates to make transformational changes in building performance, and the relationship between green buildings and BPS.