CalNEXT is celebrating another major milestone for California’s energy efficiency landscape. Backed by Southern California Edison (SCE), a newly developed deemed measure package for commercial high-efficiency windows (Statewide Measure ID SWBE012-01) has officially been added to the California electronic Technical Reference Manual (eTRM). The addition comes on the heels of a parallel win on the residential side, Residential High-Efficiency Windows Measure Package Completion, which produced the new measure SWBE011.
Windows can be a significant source of heat gain and loss, with research estimating that windows account for 30 to 45 percent of envelope heat transfer. Despite this, there were no incentivized deemed savings measure packages for high-performance windows in commercial buildings in California, and a 2018 San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) commercial windows measure had gone inactive. California investor-owned utilities (IOUs), largely led by SCE, identified the need to modernize this measure and bring high-efficiency commercial windows back into the state’s program offerings.
It started in 2024, when CalNEXT’s Commercial High Performance Windows Measure Package Development project laid the technical groundwork. The team put high-efficiency window installations to the test in both new construction and retrofit commercial settings, focusing on reduced thermal conductance and improved radiant emissivity, benchmarked against ENERGY STAR® specifications, DEER Commercial Building Prototypes, and the California Energy Code.
The project provided the energy and cost analyses needed to shape and develop a draft measure package which was then submitted to the California Technical Forum (CalTF) and, later, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). From there, CalNEXT’s Commercial High-Efficiency Windows Measure Package Completion project carried the measure through its initial review phases and set it up for CPUC submission.
The result of these efforts is an impactful new measure that supports commercial sector electrification by reducing heating load requirements. Existing commercial and equity programs implemented on behalf of the California IOUs can immediately benefit from incorporating this deemed savings measure into their offerings. This represents not only a technical achievement, but also a meaningful step forward in delivering energy savings to California’s commercial building sector.
With SWBE012-01 now part of the eTRM, and its residential counterpart SWBE011 completed in parallel, California IOU programs now have a clear, deemed pathway to bring high-efficiency windows to more commercial buildings statewide.