Equipment and systems used in buildings are becoming adaptive to environmental inputs, anticipatory in their performance, and networked to one another within a facility as well as externally to other buildings. Based on the findings of a two-phase study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), this paper summarizes enabling policies, program strategies, and the organizational approach required to accelerate the deployment of these phenomena, termed intelligent efficiency (IE), in the commercial buildings sector. Integration of information technology (IT) and building energy management is on the rise and the symbiotic benefits in annual energy cost savings are huge. However, to realize these savings, a number of factors have to fall into place—presence of building automation systems, availability of appropriate software solutions, financial incentives, and proven energy savings being some of them. Cases of successful IE projects indicate that most of these have evolved through serendipity rather than a deliberate approach. We examine these early successes for critical success factors and tipping points and based on our analysis, we suggest necessary and sufficient conditions that catalyze an accelerated adoption of IE in the commercial buildings sector. We review key enabling technologies that constitute intelligent efficiency, take stock of new capabilities to analyze big data sets, and summarize industry-led efforts to develop standards for interoperability of network protocols. Our findings suggest that the government, utility program managers, and suppliers of IT and automation products have important roles to play in creating a macro environment conducive to adopting IE.
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