Building Code Council narrows commercial energy code options, adopts Greg Johnson structure for 2-79

The Building Code Council tag voted Friday to advance a structure for proposal 2-79 developed by Greg Johnson, selecting that approach over a competing structure offered by Johnny Coker and collaborators.

The tag’s action followed a lengthy technical discussion about two alternative ways to restructure the commercial energy code’s compliance path for heating, service water heating and efficiency credits. The chosen approach consolidates credits into a single C406 table with interactive-effect math for mixed heating systems and a single equation for heating credits; the tag asked PNNL to complete modeling to populate the credit values.

The vote came after proponents and a work group spent months drafting parallel approaches. Greg Johnson described his version as a tabular, credit-based structure that captures interactive effects between lighting, envelope and mechanical measures and scales requirements by occupancy and climate zone. “The goal was to make the code much simpler for the code user while increasing accuracy,” Johnson told the tag, noting the approach relies…