2020 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings

The 2020 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings will take place on August 16th – 21st, 2020 in Pacific Grove, California, U.S.  This year’s theme is “Efficiency: The Core of a Clean Energy Future.”  We chose this theme in recognition of the rapidly evolving ecosystem of the energy industry. F rom resilience to health, from distributed energy resources to renewables to grid integration and virtual batteries, energy efficiency remains critical to our success.  Whatever the surrounding goals for expansion of clean energy systems and services, the ability to design and operate efficient buildings is an essential foundational requirement.

We are committed to sustaining the relevance and quality of the biennial Summer Study in Buildings – the premiere conference in our field.  This year we are especially excited for the continuation of our Energy Efficiency and Equity panel.  Low-income communities and communities of color stand to benefit from energy efficiency upgrades, healthier housing, and local job creation; yet they have not typically received explicit attention as stakeholders.  This panel focuses on efforts to reach historically underserved households with energy efficiency investments.

We hope you’ll take the time to attend some of the sessions in this panel.  We are also pleased to introduce a new panel, Scaling Whole-Building Retrofits.  Although significant progress has been made in certain areas, such as efficient lighting, other areas, such as building envelope retrofits, are still in need of scalable and cost-effective solutions.  Developing, implementing and adopting whole-building solutions that significantly improve the energy efficiency of our vast number of existing buildings is critical to attaining a clean energy future.  We expect that this Summer Study will be fertile ground to tackle this challenge.

Likely Participants:

Policymakers; utility staff; architects; builders; financial and insurance professionals involved with buildings; clean-tech investors; building products, equipment, and appliance manufacturers; building owners and operators; engineers; local, state, and federal agency personnel; energy researchers; NGOs; consultants; behavioral scientists; and energy efficiency professionals