Innovation Credit: Dynamic Envelope Materials INTRODUCTION For the last fifteen years, the US Department of Energy, its European counterparts and industry have been researching and developing dynamic envelop materials that can alter their performance specifications such as insulative value (U-value), shading coefficient (SC or SHGC) and daylight transmission (VTL or Tvis). The goal in developing these materials is to enable a building to tune its thermal and luminous performance in real time in response to external and internal environmental forces. This is fundamentally different from increasing the energy performance of either the system or the envelope as it allows the building to behave more like a living organism continually adapting to its environment. Managing these loads has always been a challenge to designers because the loads fluctuate dramatically throughout the day and season. The way we do this now is to either use more installed capacity of conditioning equipment and its resultant energy use or to increase the performance of the envelope. Neither solution is satisfactory as in the case of mechanical conditioning this results in consuming more resources in material and energy use. In the case of increasing the envelope performance this means reduced glazed areas, reduced daylighting and reduced views. Introduction of this technology promises to transform the transparent portions of the building (windows, skylights) from an energy liability to an energy source. Incorporating this technology has also major impact on the energy grid as its use can reduce peak loads by 20 to 30% (LBNL) and increase daylghting effectiveness in buildings. In addition, other environmental advantages for this are better occupant comfort. These technologies promise to transform building design. This is not a simple energy efficiency technology. INTENT Increased demand for dynamic envelope materials that vary thermal performance in response to climatic, weather and building load changes. This supports the emerging industry producing these materials and reduces the infrastructure to condition the building. REQUIREMENTS Provide a glazing or envelope material whose specification has a dynamic range of at least 50% of an dimensionless metric (i.e. SHGC), OR provides a dynamic range of at least 50% between the best available material and the code minimum material (i.e. U-value) AND apply this to at least 5% of the building area. POTENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES & STRATEGIES Technologies included are electrochromic glazing, thermochromic glass, photochromic glass, variable insulation, variable light transmittance materials, innovative assemblies that attain dynamic performance through moving devices. SUBMITTALS Performance metrics that address the dynamic capacity of the materials and drawings indicating location of material in building and area calculations.