ASHRAE and IBPSA-USA have announced a co-organized conference that encompasses the ASHRAE Energy Modeling Conference and IBPSA-USA SimBuild Conference. The conference, titled ASHRAE and IBPSA-USA SimBuild 2016: Building Performance Modeling, will take place Aug. 10-12, 2016, in Salt Lake City.

Twenty-three addenda to the energy standard published by ASHRAE and the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) — ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2013, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings — are currently open for public comment.

With recent research showing that ultrafine particles are more hazardous to human health than originally thought, higher-efficiency filters should be used, according to the newly published 2015 version of ASHRAE’s residential IAQ guideline.

While many building rating programs exist, there is not anything in the industry that standardizes the contents of those programs, ensuring users are knowledgeable about what impacts their ratings. A proposed standard from ASHRAE, now open for public comment, would serve as the “backbone” of such rating systems.