A project for the Climate Protection Partnership Division of the US EPA, the Most Energy Efficient Economy project addressed the question: how low can the energy use of a typical US residential building and a typical US commercial building be, utilizing only commercially available technologies, if cost were not a constraint?
Ms. Thomas and her team at ICF International researched the best technologies available worldwide. Their integrated energy simulation models (in Energy Plus) demonstrated that it was possible to go to zero-energy and even negative energy (by producing more than required annually by using solar panels) with commercially proven technologies.