Warehouses don’t look like candidates for ambitious sustainable design. They’re simple boxes — concrete floor, metal walls, flat roof, loading dock. The architecture is minimal. The systems are utilitarian. The occupants are mostly forklifts.
That framing misses what warehouses actually are from an energy standpoint: very large roofs, with high artificial lighting energy use, sitting over unconditioned or minimally conditioned spaces where envelope performance and lighting efficiency have outsized impact on total energy consumption. Those characteristics make warehouse and distribution buildings among the most economically logical commercial building types to design for net-zero energy — when the design intent is established from the beginning.
This is the story of how one architecture and engineering firm did exactly that on a federal project, what strategies they used, and what it means for industrial building design in Western North Carolina and beyond.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences needed to consolidate off-site warehouse and distribution operations onto the main NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The facility they needed was straightforward: approximately 25,000 square feet of warehouse and distribution space for equipment, supplies, and research materials.
SSOE Group, the architecture and engineering firm brought in to design the project, made a decision early in the design process that changed the trajectory of the project: they would design for net-zero energy. Not as a constraint imposed by the client, and not as a marketing position — as a performance target that shaped every decision about the building envelope, lighting, mechanical systems, and on-site energy generation.
The result, documented in SSOE Group’s project publications, is the only Net Zero Energy Building in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services portfolio. The facility achieved LEED Platinum certification. Energy modeling projects savings of approximately 157,000 kWh per year — roughly $12,381 annually at federal utility rates — compared to a baseline warehouse designed only to ASHRAE 90.1 minimum standards.
The building is not architecturally complex. It’s a warehouse. What makes it significant is what a focused design process can accomplish in a building type that is routinely designed to minimum code standards and never revisited.
Net-zero energy is a two-part equation: reduce the building’s energy demand as much as possible, then generate the remainder on-site with renewable energy. Every net-zero warehouse project that has succeeded has followed this sequence. Attempting to generate your way to net-zero without first addressing the load is expensive and often not feasible with available roof area.
For the NIEHS warehouse, load reduction came from four areas.
Building envelope. High-performance insulated metal panel wall systems and a high-R roof assembly reduce heat gain in summer and heat loss in winter. For an unconditioned or minimally conditioned warehouse, the envelope determines how extreme the internal temperature swings are and how much conditioning energy is required to maintain acceptable working conditions and storage temperatures. An insulated metal panel system with R-20+ wall performance and a roof assembly at R-30+ or above costs more than code-minimum construction but delivers energy savings that compound over the 30–50 year life of the building.
Air barrier continuity. Warehouses are notorious for air infiltration — at dock doors, at grade-level door thresholds, at penetrations through the building skin. A continuous air barrier, properly detailed and installed at every penetration, is one of the highest-return energy investments in industrial building construction. Air infiltration doesn’t show up in energy modeling the way it shows up in utility bills, which is why it’s chronically underdesigned.
Daylighting. Skylights or clerestory windows positioned to deliver daylight to 2–3% of the warehouse floor area — a practical target for most industrial buildings — reduce the hours during which artificial lighting is operating at full output. For a warehouse that operates from 7 AM to 6 PM, daylight contribution during those core hours can reduce lighting energy use by 30–50% when combined with properly calibrated daylight harvesting controls.
LED high-bay lighting with controls. Replacing metal halide or fluorescent high-bay fixtures with LED high-bays cuts lighting energy consumption by 40–60% before any controls are applied. Adding occupancy sensors — so that aisles not being actively worked are dimmed or off — and daylight harvesting controls — so that the artificial lighting dims proportionally as daylight increases — extends those savings further. For warehouses with high ceilings and large clear spans, LED high-bay lighting with occupancy and daylight controls is the highest-ROI energy upgrade available.
After reducing the building’s energy demand as far as practical through envelope and lighting improvements, the remaining energy load is met with on-site photovoltaic generation. Warehouse roofs are uniquely well-suited to commercial solar: they are large, flat, unobstructed, and structurally simple. There are no dormers, no equipment crowding the roof plane, no adjacent structures casting shadows across the array. A 250,000-square-foot warehouse roof can realistically accommodate a 1.0–1.5 megawatt PV array — enough to significantly offset or fully cover a well-designed building’s annual energy consumption.
For the NIEHS warehouse, the combination of load reduction and on-site PV generation achieved the net-zero threshold: annual on-site generation equal to or exceeding annual energy consumption. The LEED Platinum certification reflects not just energy performance but the full range of sustainable design measures — sustainable sites, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and materials selection.
The NIEHS project predates the current wave of EV truck electrification, but any net-zero or high-performance warehouse being designed today needs to account for it. Major retailers and e-commerce companies are accelerating electrification of their delivery fleets. Distribution facilities serving those clients increasingly need EV charging infrastructure — Level 2 charging for light vehicles and, in larger facilities, DC fast charging for commercial trucks.
The cost of adding EV charging infrastructure during initial construction — conduit runs, electrical capacity reservations, and load center sizing — is a fraction of the cost of retrofitting it after the building is complete. Designing the electrical distribution system with EV charging as a future load, even if no chargers are installed at opening, is standard future-proofing on any warehouse designed today.
The Getting to Zero Forum and the New Buildings Institute maintain databases of commercial buildings that have achieved zero net energy or near-zero energy performance, including industrial and warehouse types. Their published case studies document the real-world performance of buildings designed to ZNE standards, including the gap between modeled and actual energy performance — a gap that exists in most high-performance buildings and should be accounted for in design targets.
AIA San Diego’s 2023 net-zero carbon case study series draws on Getting to Zero Forum data to document the specific design decisions and actual performance of zero-carbon buildings across commercial types. The series notes that California’s architect relicensure now requires 5 hours of Zero Net Carbon Design coursework per renewal cycle — a leading-edge regulatory signal that reflects where building codes in states including North Carolina are likely to move over the next decade.
The New Buildings Institute’s broader case study library, documented at newbuildings.org, includes industrial and warehouse ZNE examples that extend beyond the federal portfolio. The Bagatelos Architectural Glass Systems facility in Sacramento — a 63,000-square-foot 1969 concrete warehouse retrofitted to ZNE performance in 2008 — is among the earliest documented industrial ZNE retrofits and demonstrates that net-zero energy is achievable in existing industrial stock, not just new construction.
Western North Carolina is not Bethesda or Sacramento. The utility rates, solar resource, and construction cost context are different. But the design principles that made the NIEHS warehouse net-zero are not specific to the federal government or to the Mid-Atlantic climate.
WNC’s solar resource is adequate for commercial PV — annual average horizontal irradiance in Asheville runs approximately 4.2–4.5 peak sun hours per day, comparable to much of the Southeast. Duke Energy’s commercial rates and the NC rate structure for net energy metering (NEM) determine the economics of on-site generation for grid-connected commercial facilities — these should be verified with a current utility rate analysis before sizing a PV system.
The federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for commercial solar, extended and expanded under the Inflation Reduction Act, allows commercial solar installation costs to be partially offset through federal tax credits. The specific credit percentage and eligibility requirements should be confirmed with a tax professional, as the IRA provisions are subject to ongoing regulatory interpretation.
For WNC industrial clients, the practical implication is this: the design decisions that determine a building’s energy performance for the next 30–50 years are made during construction documents. Envelope insulation levels, air barrier design, lighting system selection, roof structural capacity for PV loading, and electrical distribution sizing for EV charging are all construction-phase decisions. They cannot be economically retrofitted after a building is occupied. The right time to design for net-zero — or for the high-performance level that makes net-zero achievable — is before the slab is poured.
Form & Function Architecture’s approach to sustainable commercial design in WNC integrates passive strategies — building orientation, envelope performance, daylighting — with active systems and renewable energy planning from the first site visit. For industrial clients who want to understand what high-performance design would cost and save on their specific project, that conversation starts with a site visit and a program conversation, not a generic range.
25,000 SF. LEED Platinum. Only net-zero energy building in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services portfolio. Projected savings: 157,000 kWh/year, approximately $12,381/year. Strategies: high-performance envelope, LED high-bay with daylight harvesting, on-site photovoltaics. Achievement date: October 2018.
63,000 SF. 1969 concrete warehouse building retrofitted to zero net energy performance. One of the earliest documented industrial ZNE retrofits in the New Buildings Institute case study library. Demonstrates that net-zero energy performance is achievable in existing industrial stock through envelope upgrades, lighting replacement, and on-site PV — not just in new construction.
While not a warehouse in the traditional sense, New Belgium’s Asheville brewery campus is a locally documented example of sustainable industrial design with directly measurable resilience outcomes. The campus was built on a former contaminated brownfield, incorporated 14 linear miles of reclaimed wood and metal, and diverted 97% of construction waste from landfill. Its restored wetland buffer on the French Broad River frontage is credited with dispersing floodwaters during Helene in September 2024 and limiting structural damage to the facility — a direct demonstration of the relationship between sustainable site design and building resilience in WNC’s specific context.
A net-zero energy building generates as much energy on-site as it consumes over the course of a year, measured at the utility meter. For a warehouse, this typically means a combination of aggressive load reduction (high-performance envelope, LED lighting with controls, efficient HVAC for conditioned areas) and on-site photovoltaic generation sufficient to offset annual electricity consumption. Net-zero does not mean energy self-sufficient in real-time — a net-zero building may draw from the grid at night or in winter and export energy to the grid during peak solar production — but the annual balance is zero or better.
Yes, for new construction with the right design intent from the beginning. WNC’s solar resource is adequate for commercial PV. The combination of high-performance envelope, LED high-bay lighting with controls, and rooftop PV can achieve net-zero energy for most warehouse types without exotic technology. The economics depend on current utility rates, available incentives, and project-specific construction costs — factors that should be analyzed for your specific project before making design decisions based on published generalizations.
USGBC’s LEED v4.1 Building Design and Construction rating system includes a specific Warehouse and Distribution Centers pathway under LEED BD+C. The rating system covers sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, innovation, and regional priority credits. LEED Platinum, as achieved by the NIEHS warehouse, requires the highest point total and is typically achieved only when energy performance is a primary design driver from the beginning of the project.
On-site solar reduces long-term energy costs, provides partial protection against utility rate increases, may qualify for federal Investment Tax Credit benefits under the Inflation Reduction Act, and in some cases allows energy sales back to the grid under Duke Energy’s or the applicable cooperative’s net energy metering (NEM) program. The payback period depends on installation cost, utility rates, NEM compensation, and available incentives — typically 7–15 years for commercial solar in NC under current conditions. The structural design of the warehouse roof affects installation cost and system performance; a roof designed to carry PV loading from the beginning costs less than a retrofit structural upgrade.
The building envelope. Insulation levels in the roof and walls, and the continuity of the air barrier, determine the baseline energy load that all other systems must offset. A warehouse with a high-performance envelope requires less mechanical conditioning, less lighting energy, and a smaller PV array to achieve the same energy performance target than a warehouse built to code minimum with the same lighting and PV investment. Envelope decisions are made during construction documents and cannot be economically changed after construction — they are the highest-leverage design decision on any industrial building.
Yes, though the economics differ from new construction. Roof replacement — which eventually happens anyway — is the optimal moment to add insulation and air barrier upgrades. Lighting replacement from metal halide to LED high-bay with controls typically has a 3–5 year simple payback and can be done without disrupting operations. Adding PV at roof replacement or as a bolt-on to an existing structurally adequate roof is feasible for many existing warehouse roofs. Envelope upgrades to walls and foundations are more disruptive and have longer paybacks. A phased approach — lighting first, then PV at roof replacement, then envelope at next major renovation — allows existing facilities to improve performance over time without a single large capital event.
Form & Function Architecture designs commercial and industrial projects across Western North Carolina with sustainable design integrated from the site visit through construction administration. If you’re planning a warehouse, distribution facility, or light manufacturing building in WNC and want to understand what high-performance design would look like for your project, the conversation starts with a site visit.
Contact Form & Function at 828.575.2423 or info@ffarchitecture.com.
