Department of Energy, NFRC
Roadmap for Industry's Future
This is an exciting time for the fenestration industry. New technology is playing a pivotal role in helping window manufacturers compete in the marketplace, but changing market and business conditions present serious challenges to the industry.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Building Technology, State and Community Programs (BTS) has teamed up with the fenestration industry’s top stakeholders, including the National Fenestration Rating Council (NFRC), to create the Window Industry Technology Roadmap, a 20-year industry plan that represents the first step in defining the industry’s future.
This initiative is part of the BTS strategic plan and will help to align government resources with the high-priority needs identified by the industry. BTS used industry trends, economic climate, social trends, potential barriers, technology factors, and regulatory trends as context for the Technology Roadmap.
The Technology Roadmap started to come together in September 1998 at the Executive Visioning Forum in Chicago. This forum paved the way for a vision statement anticipating that, by the year 2020, customers will recognize fenestration products as affordable “appliances in the wall” that are active and interactive parts of a true building system. This vision foresees windows offering added value by providing energy, entertainment, and information with enhanced comfort, lighting, security, and aesthetics in harmony with the natural environment. Elements of this vision include windows as an integral part of the building system, more informed consumers, increased use of glass and windows in buildings, and windows as an energy source.
To realize the Technology Roadmap’s vision, the industry will have to overcome several market, policy, and technology barriers. Market barriers include the lack of educated demand for and the high first cost of innovative new window products. Policy barriers include dissimilar, poorly enforced, and inconsistent building codes. Among the technology barriers are the lack of integration tools and forms needed to achieve true system integration, as well as an ambiguous definition of “durability” and its implications for warranty.
The Technology Roadmap defines each of these barriers and lays the groundwork for overcoming them using a three-tier process that includes high-priority actions to be taken in the near-term (0-3 years), the mid-term (3-10 years), and the long-term (10-20 years). For example, one of the mid-term policy actions is to establish a regionally sensitive national building code. Developing superior insulating materials and components for fenestration products is an example of a long-term policy action designed to overcome technology barriers. The Roadmap also provides cross-cutting actions to be taken, such as developing products that encourage consumers to upgrade as features advance.
The fenestration industry, like any other, faces challenges on the road to prosperity. NFRC, other industry stakeholders and DOE have designed a blueprint – the Window Industry Technology Roadmap - to ensure the industry’s future success.
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NFRC Update | October 2006