The Massachusetts Board of Building Regulations and Standards voted Tuesday to adopt a stretch energy code for the state that would make new commercial buildings under 100,000 square feet up to 30 percent more energy efficient than base standards and reduce carbon emissions by nearly 40 percent. The new rules will mean significant energy cost savings for building owners and tenants who pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country.

The stretch code applies to new and existing building types including residential, but the standards related to new, small- and mid-sized commercial buildings are based on a protocol developed by New Buildings Institute (NBI) called Core Performance. NBI, a nonprofit organization working to improve the energy performance of commercial buildings, created Core Performance as a direct path to high performance building that does not require modeling. The Core Performance Guide describes a set of simple, discrete design strategies that when applied under an integrated design process result in an energy-efficient building that is cheaper to operate and more comfortable for occupants.

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