An Examination of Rebuild America Partnership Accomplishments and the Factors Influencing Them

Schweitzer, M.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

关键词: Testing;    State Government;    32 Energy Conservation, Consumption, And Utilization;    Construction;    Commercial Buildings;   

DOI  :  10.2172/838097
RP-ID  :  ORNL/CON-490
RP-ID  :  AC05-00OR22725
RP-ID  :  838097

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

The Rebuild America program was established in 1994 to accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency measures and practices in existing public facilities, commercial buildings, and multifamily housing units. More recently, the program has expanded to include new construction as well. The program encourages the formation of partnerships involving state and local governments, private businesses, and other organizations to help identify and solve problems related to energy use in buildings. Rebuild America does not directly fund actual building improvements. Instead, it provides the Rebuild Partners with the technical tools and assistance they need to plan and implement building projects and stimulates other entities to make substantial investments in energy efficiency. At the request of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory studied the Rebuild America program for the purpose of identifying key factors associated with successful operations. Substantial amounts of data were collected directly from Rebuild America partnerships concerning the results achieved by each of their individual projects, both committed and completed. In addition, data were collected from secondary sources on a limited number of factors describing partnership setting and characteristics. By combining these two data sets, we were able to perform statistical analyses testing the potential relationship between each partnership characteristic and each of four key results measures. The influences on successful partnership performance also were determined in another way, which allowed a broader examination of potentially important factors. Telephone interviews were conducted with representatives from 61 high-performing Rebuild America partnerships throughout the United States. The respondents were asked to identify the most important factors influencing good performance and the types of Rebuild America products, services, and support that were most useful to their partnership. In addition to having substantial geographic variation, the sample of partnerships also engaged in projects in all five sectors served by the Rebuild program--colleges and universities; commercial buildings; K-12 schools; local and state government; and public and multi-family housing--in roughly the same proportion as for the entire set of Rebuild America projects nationwide.