Don’t Stop Us Now: Advancing Retrofit Solutions Together

NESEA’s 2026 BuildingEnergy Boston conference, themed “Don’t Stop Us Now”, is set to hone in on the challenges and barriers building professionals are facing while reinforcing that we are not alone in solving them. That’s especially true for existing buildings where technical, financial, and operational challenges can stall projects or deter it from success.

Existing buildings account for 35% of Massachusetts emissions, making retrofits an essential step towards decarbonization. With new building performance standards in effect in Cambridge, Boston, and Newton, building owners are under pressure to reduce their emissions and energy use while improving health, resiliency, and comfort.

BE+ has launched the Building Performance Exchange to bridge the gap between owners and practitioners with the primary goal of connecting stakeholders with helpful resources, tools, and expertise to make retrofits easier and more successful.

Here are 11 sessions at BuildingEnergy Boston this year that highlight crucial aspects of retrofitting existing buildings, from planning to implementation.

Building Science Best Practices
Two crucial components of retrofitting are holistic system-wide planning and granular component-specific upgrades. Building science practitioners with diverse backgrounds and expertise in these areas gather at BuildingEnergy to present their latest discovery or demonstrate tested and viable strategies.

These two sessions focus on the difficulties found among existing buildings and the best practices for a better solution.

• • Retrocommissioning For Existing Buildings
  • More Good through Less Bad

Misalignment between an energy model and reality can be frustrating when budgets are built around projected savings. This is why investigating potential causes is a valuable first step. Retrocommissioning can reveal why systems are not living up to their expectations, often providing straightforward solutions, such as educating staff on proper use of a building management system or fixing imbalances and leaks in a distribution system. Reducing the building’s operational and embodied carbon impact within the existing building shell may be challenging, but it’s achievable with guidance from the experts.

Making the Budget Work
Financing remains one of the biggest barriers in retrofit projects, especially with sudden program cuts and expensive electric rates. These sessions dedicate their time to navigating the complexities of capital and the art of financing in finer detail.

• • Decarbonizing Non-Profit Buildings via No-Cost Planning and Financing Resources
  • Who Pays and Who Saves? How Electric Rates Shape Equitable Multifamily Electrification
  • Deep Energy Retrofits, Round 3: A Holistic Cost Analysis

Learning the functions both behind and in front of a utility meter empowers owners to make the best financial decisions for their buildings. Moreover, finding the right electricity rate structure and dodging peak demand charges with smarter equipment use can help balance operational expenses. Analyzing the hidden health and societal costs of these financial decisions is vital to thoughtful and equitable improvement of the built environment.

Learning by Example
Case studies demonstrate project experiences, shortcomings and barriers, but also shed light on replicable strategies that are proven to work. These sessions showcase case studies of commercial and large portfolio decarbonization projects—sharing both positive and negative experiences.

• • Onward to 2050! Two Existing Commercial Building Decarbonization Case Studies
  • From Building Decarbonization to Campus Decarbonization: Lessons, Pitfalls, Results

Show us the Data!
In an industry of performance-based policy, data is essential. These presenters dig deep into energy, emissions, and cost data, finding trends, and paving the way for others to learn from both success and failure.

• • Proof over Promises: Cold Climate Multifamily Retrofit Results
  • From Model to Meter: What Can We Learn from the Massachusetts LBER Data?
  • Building Better with What We Have: Balancing Carbon, Cost, and Housing

Tracking past and modeling future data is the best strategy to monitor building performance. There are more efforts than ever to prove that energy conservation measures and building upgrades are on the right path. Building Performance Standards illuminate the fruits of our labor, as a policy-driven approach to measuring building performance.To identify opportunities for improvement, data-driven decisions support wider and more effective technology use.

BuildingEnergy Boston marks its 51st year with a robust selection of sessions, highlighting the innovation in existing buildings. Out of the 45+ sessions, these 11 sessions offer insight into the important pieces of the puzzle of retrofitting existing buildings. Join us at MassCEC’s sponsored session, “Scope vs. Carbon: Stories of Decarbonizing Multi-Family Buildings,” to hear from project teams as they share insight on scope, timeline, and key decisions. Explore our other sessions and find us tabling just outside the trade show floor!