Jim Pauley, senior VP of governmental relations and external affairs for Schneider Electric, has an article up today on the website Greener Buildings where he promotes a public-private partnership to continue a program likely to be defunded by Congress.
In the article, "Are We Missing the Green Buildings Deal of a Lifetime?", Pauley argues that the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) is a relatively inexpensive ($12 million) program that has become a source of data vital to the further development of more efficient commercial buildings. The program's most recent data is now rather old, dating to 2003, and completion of the scheduled 2011 survey is uncertain. Pauley suggests that the benefits to users as diverse as the Energy Star program and suppliers of energy efficiency technology who use it as a benchmark are too important to let the program go.
"From my perspective, it's too big for any one group to tackle, but a public-private approach involving private companies, trade groups, academics and the public sector may be just what we need to carry out the equivalent of a Green Buildings Census and keep the industry on solid footing."