From BC3
BC3 currently contains 2949 cost entries, with data from Faithful + Gould cost estimates, ASHRAE’s 2009 Economic Database in Support of ASHRAE 90.2, and California Public Utility’s 2008 Database for Energy Efficiency Resources (DEER) cost study. Faithful + Gould (F+G), a North America-based project management consultancy and cost estimator, was contracted by the Building Energy Codes Program (BECP), managed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) on behalf of the US DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, to provide independent cost estimation services for the residential and commercial construction components in this database. This cost data will be used by DOE, PNNL and others to compare costs of construction under various residential and commercial energy code requirements.
BC3 is a publicly available repository of building component costs. It serves as the ultimate source of the energy-related component costs for DOE’s residential code development activities, including cost-effectiveness analyses. The residential cost-effectiveness methodology requires that incremental efficiency measure costs be used to evaluate and compare the induced cost and energy savings resulting from changes in energy code requirements. Data inputs for establishing these incremental costs are based predominantly on the Faithful+Gould independent cost estimates contained in the BC3 database. Detailed information about the cost-effectiveness analysis, as well as the input files and final results, will soon be available on the BECP website .
BC3 is designed to provide primarily new-construction cost data for residential, multifamily, and commercial buildings, but some retrofit costs are included. For more residential retrofit cost information, please see The National Residential Efficiency Measures Database supported by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
