ASHRAE 90.2 Developments

*This post was drafted by Isaac Elnecave and Michael Hairston of the MEEA Policy Team

At the recently concluded ASHRAE Winter Meeting in Montreal, significant changes occurred to the development of the ASHRAE 90.2 standard (ASHRAE 90.2 is the companion standard to ASHRAE 90.1 and applies primarily to residential dwellings). Prior to the meeting, an advisory draft proposal had been circulated by the committee. This proposal received a very negative reaction from the codes community.

The 90.2 proposal was based on a proposal (EC-16) submitted by the National Association of Home Builders to the International Code Council (ICC) which was rejected by the building officials attending the Final Action Hearings last year  (During the ICC Final Action Hearings, building officials vote on proposed amendments to the code.  Amendments receiving an affirmative vote are included in the next version of the International Energy Conservation Code, which is the model energy code.)

At the ASHRAE meeting, interested parties were given (in a departure from standard ASHRAE policy) an opportunity to deliver comments on the proposal. The comments were uniformly opposed to the proposal and called for a radical redirection in the code development process (i.e. simply tweaking the proposal would be woefully insufficient). Most of the comments called on the 90.2 committee to use its expertise to consider the developing of a standard that is more energy efficient than the national model codes developed at the ICC.

Discussions by upper management at ASHRAE are ongoing to determine the direction of the 90.2 standard.

More posts like this and other energy efficiency topics at the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance official blog MEEAUnplugged.