This Research Report, prepared in conjunction with members of the Passive Solar Industries Council, calls for an enlightened Federal policy about buildings in the United States that recognizes the immense and strategic importance of these structures — both those existing and those yet to be built — and the overarching influence that buildings have on energy use, environmental emissions, and the nation’s economy.

The recommended policy is based on five objectives that have been developed by the members of the buildings industries and trades, adhering to a comprehensive “whole buildings approach.” This represents a method of siting, design, equipment and material selection, financing, construction, and long-term operation that takes into account the systems nature of buildings and user requirements. It treats the overall building as an integrated system of interacting components. This umbrella concept unites buildings and their individual components with the emerging issues of sustainability. It encompasses all real-world physical and economic elements with which buildings interact or on which they depend.

The same framework can bridge the federal agencies involved in buildings programs — whether they deal with research, development, or market transformation — in a coordinated manner, as well as reach to outside agencies and organizations, pulling all together into one unified package of complementary and supporting activities. The result will be buildings that are more energy-efficient, that use solar and other renewable energy sources, that stimulate occupant productivity, that reduce adverse environmental impacts, and that support greater economic efficiency.

The message is clear: to minimize duplication and fragmentation of effort and to maximize potential returns for both industry and society at large, there is a strong need and a clear obligation for enhanced, long-term, stable federal attention and funding for this issue. Resulting programs must be coordinated within and between agencies, as well as with the buildings trades that are using the whole buildings approach.

We urge widespread adoption of the whole buildings approach by government, industry, and the private sector so that all can capitalize on the great potential benefits of integrated policies and programs that will lead to well-integrated buildings. The market transformation that brings all facets of the whole build-ings approach into common practice will occur only as a result of a new appreciation of those benefits, combined with a strong market demand by those who want to share in them. The “market push” can in part be stimulated by a federal policy that helps structure markets for emerging technologies. The “market pull” can stem in part from a better appreciation of the role of buildings not just as economic elements but as factors that shape our economy and the quality of our environment.

In fiscal year 1998, the federal government will spend approximately $476 million on buildings-related R&D and other tech nology programs. Funding for the few whole buildings programs that exist is insignificant in comparison. With relatively scant funding directed toward specific, well-integrated programs that use a whole buildings approach, it is clear that considerable potential economic and environmental benefits are going unrealized.

A whole buildings approach is a better policy and one that will bring about change. It must be elevated to a high level of administrative responsibility and respect. The concept of whole buildings must secure a mandate simultanously from the federal government, industry, and private-sector research centers to coordinate, enhance, supplement, complement, and fill in the gaps that are still barriers to systems integration in research and practice.

The paper concludes by presenting five objectives for a more coherent, integrated federal buildings policy. It also provides specific recommendations to promote the adoption, successful introduction, and continuing effectiveness of a national whole buildings R&D program.

The five objectives and the strategies for achieving them are: