The President Proposes, Congress Disposes is a saying heard every year in the various congressional appropriations committees tasked with reviewing the President’s annual budget submission. This is because Congress is ultimately responsible for deciding how trillions of dollars will be allocated. Knowing budget requests are simply requests, IIBEC EVP and CEO Brian Pallasch submitted testimony to the House Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee to support the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies program. Pallasch requested the program be fully funded at a minimum, and asked that an additional $10 million be allocated for building-enclosure research.
“We have a responsibility to use energy wisely. Investing in building enclosure research will help us do just that.” —Brian Pallasch’s message to Congress
In the testimony, Pallasch took the opportunity to educate the committee about the importance of a building’s enclosure and its impact on energy usage. He drew their attention to the leadership role played by the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office (BTO) and how the Building Envelope Campaign (BEC) was developed to help building owners, managers, architects, and builders better understand the relationship between the building enclosure and energy performance. IIBEC is a partner and proud supporter of the BEC. In his conclusion, Pallasch emphasized the connection of a building’s enclosure with the goal of reducing energy consumption – one of the goals of the Biden Administration budget.
“Additional case studies and demonstration projects will further the awareness and understanding of the importance of a building’s enclosure and how different products, designs, construction materials, and methods, can lead to optimized energy usage and lower long-term operating costs. This understanding will likely lead more owners and managers choosing a high-performance enclosure design and achieve, intentionally or unintentionally, the goal of reducing the sector’s carbon usage.”
In the future, IIBEC will continue to look for opportunities to extoll the critical role the membership serves when designing a building’s enclosure to maximize energy savings.
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