Commercial Buildings

High performance energy efficient buildings are important because they have low energy costs and exceptional standards for health and safety. Alaska Housing offers financing programs, conducts research, and provides information and technical assistance for non-residential buildings to help promote a sustainable built environment in Alaska.

Technical assistance

Alaska Housing offers free technical assistance to public facility owners, managers, and others interested in completing energy efficiency projects on publicly owned buildings.

Reports, publications, and resources

This section contains valuable information to help facility owners, managers, and others complete successful energy efficiency projects and implement cost-saving measures through fine tuning operations and maintenance practices.

• The Strategic Energy Management Practices Guide outlines each step of the energy efficiency retrofit process from basic benchmarking and energy auditing to project financing.
• Introduction to Energy Efficiency in Public and Commercial Facilities provides a starting point for addressing energy use in existing facilities.
• White Paper on Energy Use in Alaska's Public Facilities analyzes energy and building data from more than 300 energy audits of public facilities across Alaska.
• Reports, Publications and Resources provides access to all the energy audits and other public and commercial facility resources.

Tools

Alaska Housing has developed a variety of tools to further advance the built environment in Alaska and assist facility owners and managers in implementing energy efficiency projects.

• Building monitoring - An open source building monitoring system that measures real-time energy use and provides a summary of building operating performance.
• Cash Flow Calculator - Allows the user to develop a preliminary analysis of the cost effectiveness of an energy efficiency retrofit by comparing cash flows of various funding scenarios.
• REAL Benchmark Form - This spreadsheet can be used to track basic building and energy information to see trends in energy use and operating costs.

Financing

The Public Facility loan provides financing for energy efficiency improvements to buildings owned by regional educational attendance areas, the University of Alaska, the state or municipalities in the state.