Eneref Institute, a leading advocate for sustainable development, has announced the launch of their Natural Interior Daylight (NID) initiative. The campaign is tailored to advance the specification of daylighting as a significant light source in commercial and residential facilities.

Multiple lighting studies have demonstrated increased health and human productivity benefits for students and employees in spaces with properly designed natural interior daylight. And daylight harvesting, including windows, skylights and tubular daylighting devices, in place of or in conjunction with traditional electric lighting, can significantly reduce a building’s energy load.

To launch the NID initiative, Eneref Institute authored a daylighting market report entitled, “Seven Market Obstacles to Daylighting,” which is scheduled for publication in the February, 2014 issue of the Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society, LD+A Magazine. The report is also available on www.eneref.org.

Going forward, Eneref Institute’s Natural Interior Daylight initiative will spotlight a multi-economic sector of the daylighting industry by publishing a series of case studies featuring facilities that benefited from the installation of natural interior daylighting. Eneref’s daylighting case study reports will highlight specific solutions and validate the health, productivity and energy benefits within various vertical markets. Eneref Institute is the industry standard in the built environment for 3rd-party case studies validating solutions. Eneref’s case studies are drawn from interviews representing a broad range of sales channel stakeholders, from solution providers to end-users.

Because of daylighting’s enormous benefits, the use of natural interior daylight in homes and buildings should be much more common, asserts Eneref Institute’s report.

“You don't need a degree in illuminating engineering to know that a room with a view — one with windows that lets in natural light — is what we desire. Inherently we just know,” says Seth Warren Rose, founding director of Eneref Institute. “Yet, while few technologies combine as many health and environmental benefits, the daylighting market remains only a sliver of what it could be.”

Eneref Institute already leads an industry-wide initiative, “Solar Thermal Advantage,” designed to increase adoption of solar heating and cooling in residential and commercial facilities by working closely with government agencies, including the US Department of Defense, Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

A subsequent report will encapsulate Eneref’s daylighting case studies, and include contributions from lighting designers, building owners and finance organizations as well as from manufacturers of daylighting controls, components and complete systems. Those invited to participate in Eneref’s NID initiative will provide expertise across all sectors of the daylighting industry and represent a wealth of diverse perspectives.