Seesmart knows commercial buildings. Many of our top-selling products (LED tube lights, high bays, and PAR lights) find their way home in these structures. Can you think of the last doctor’s office, retail store or office building you were in that didn’t bear rows and rows of fluorescent tube lights? Our line of LED lamps is designed to replace just that type of unsightly, flickering, humming, mercury-filled product.

Consequently, Seesmart also knows how much energy commercial buildings use. And even progressive, environmentally-conscious California doesn’t seem to be doing a great job at establishing and enforcing effective energy standards for these buildings.

A new study by Next 10 and Collaborative Economics has found that little is being done to reduce commercial building energy usage– which accounts for 37% of statewide energy consumption– and that many structures are enormously inefficient. California currently lacks energy efficiency standards for existing buildings and state standards for new buildings, the study finds, could be much more stringent.

The study stipulates that efficiency improvements in commercial buildings could reduce their power use by 50% with relatively simple and inexpensive upgrades to lighting and insulation.  In fact, a switch to LED lighting in these buildings can reduce total energy use by 10-20%. Overall, commercial buildings in California waste as much as 80% of the energy they consume.

Via The Thin Green Line, GreenBiz