The whole buildings policy framework is not new. It has been evolving over a number of years. In 1989, in a report prepared for the AIA/ASCA Research Council, Donald Watson identified the need for a whole systems innovation in build-ings as a longer-term initiative to improve the climate for innovation (in the U.S. building industry).²² That report went on to identify an “applied R&D” need that cut cross the public and private sectors, arising from a “lack of … whole-systems integration and innovation in building.”²³ In 1992, Watson stressed an expanded concept of “total buildings performance” to include the building within the context of its larger societal demands and impacts.²⁴

Federal policy encompassing the integrated systems approach was established in the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct), when “standards” referred to in the Act were required to “contain energy saving and renewable energy specifications.”²⁵ EPAct was also the origin of the Home Energy Rating System (HERS), which included explicit instructions to “provide that rating systems take into account local climate conditions and … solar energy collected on-site.”²⁶

This policy was echoed two years later when President Clinton issued Executive Order 12902 on March 8, 1994. In his instructions to federal agencies to achieve a 30% reduction in energy use in federal facilities by 2005 (relative to a 1985 baseline), the President noted that “each agency involved in the construction of a new facility that is to be either owned or leased to the Federal Government shall: (1) design and construct such facility to minimize the life cycle cost of the facility by utilizing energy efficiency … or solar or other renewable energy technologies; … and (4) utilize passive solar design and adopt active solar technologies where they are cost-effective.”²⁷

Listing passive solar and energy efficiency in the same pronouncement does not necessarily imply a whole buildings integration of the two into federal R&D programs, however. The PSIC report referred to earlier concluded that “the vast majority of programs address buildings as components rather than as integrated systems. Funding for the few whole buildings programs that exist is insignificant in comparison to the breadth of building-related programs in general.”²⁸

The PSIC report described a few federal programs that use the whole buildings framework. Among these are “Building America” and “Exemplary Buildings” in the Department of Energy (DOE) and the “Energy Star Buildings” program in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Whole buildings research has also emerged internationally in several of the tasks of the International Energy Agency. Probably the closest one for promoting R&D with a whole buildings perspective is Task 23 (1997–2002), “Optimization of Solar Energy Use in Large Buildings.”²⁹

DOE has also been developing a Buildings for the 21^st Century “umbrella” strategy to integrate design, advanced materials and equipment, and construction strategies within a single whole buildings framework. The objective of that strategy is “to instill a whole new way of thinking about buildings … from a ‘whole building’ or systems engineering perspective.”³⁰ The priority of the program’s action plan, developed with private industry, nonprofit groups, and the National Laboratories, was to “help accelerate the adoption of the whole buildings or systems integration approach … and create an over arching whole building energy R&D plan for the U.S.”³¹ Unfortunately, the Buildings for the 21^st Century framework has been an unfunded idea since 1996. The program still does not identify or direct any specific funding toward accomplishing the whole buildings coordination that it proposes. That experience demonstrates that whole buildings is still seen only as an abstract concept rather than a concrete program element.

The programs mentioned here are good starts. But they do not constitute an integrated federal whole buildings program. They are at best very modestly funded and are not viewed as a cornerstone of coherent federal policy. Given these small first steps, where do we need to go?

Certainly a major role of a whole buildings approach will be to serve as a coordinating framework for integrating the multitude of federal buildings programs and building a bridge to cooperative and complementary R&D programs by industry and the private sector. But if whole buildings is to bring about change, it must be elevated to a high level of administrative responsibility and respect. Whole buildings must secure a mandate simultaneously from the federal government, industry, and private sector research centers to coordinate, enhance, supplement, complement, and fill in gaps that are still barriers to systems integration in research and practice.

No substantive advances will be made in any of these directions without the emergence of whole buildings by common consent as a program that is essential to all others. Although this might appear to be an almost insurmountable task, there are several concrete steps that can be taken to implement a federal policy based on a whole buildings approach.

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