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Smart Search TemplateBuildings and Productivity
Buildings are major users of electricity. The residential and commercial buildings sectors account for more than a third of total energy use and about two thirds of electricity use in the U.S. A comprehensive, end-user approach to retrofitting or designing your company's building will produce large energy savings. It is important to take all aspects of your building and its occupants into consideration and understand their initial investments in respect to their life-cycle costs.
For example, while closely examining the lighting situation in a building and its current energy costs, it is wise to also factor in the amount of heat these lights generate and determine the consequent load on your HVAC system over time. Other components of a building should be accounted for in the same manner because upgrading a building should be a systematic effort. Designing for the occupants of a building will increase your company's productivity while reducing its energy costs.
More important, the people in your building account for 92 percent of its life-cycle costs. Design a building to give employees the comfort they want and the appropriate workspace for their specific tasks, which usually means giving them more control over lighting, heating and cooling.
