This exciting new development means that anyone can pick up these FREE tools and start analysing how their home, office or school performs.

So whether you're a self builder or architect wanting to take energy consumption into account during design, a property developer, facilities manager, a student undertaking a project, or you're just plain interested, it is now possible to scientifically analyse for FREE how much energy a building uses and how that translates to associated carbon emissions. You can even look at how modifications will affect the outcome.

VE-Ware is not just another carbon calculator. Its calculation engine is part of the IES Virtual Environment, which is an industry respected building performance analysis tool used by the world's top architectural and engineering firms in the design of low-energy buildings.

The calculations are based on real geometry, international data on local climate and weather conditions and the typical characteristics of different building, room and heating and cooling system types.

Dr. Don McLean, the Founder and MD of IES, commented: "I'm incredibly excited by today's launch, in many ways it's a culmination of 14 years of work. When I founded IES in 1994 my aim was to develop what were primarily academic tools and bring them into mainstream use. Buildings are incredibly important in mitigating climate change - they account for around 40% of global CO2 emissions, but at the same time it is this sector which is the most cost effective when it comes to reducing those emissions. VE-Ware and our link to Google SketchUp gives everyone the capability to get involved and really opens the door wide to the incredible mitigation potential building performance analysis offers."

How To Determine A Building'S Energy Consumption And Carbon Emissions For Free In 5 Easy Steps...

1. Model your building in Google SketchUp

2. Open VE-Ware and tell it where your building is in the world

3. Define your: Building type; Construction materials; Heating and cooling system types; Room types

4. Press a button - automatic detailed thermal simulation is performed for you

5. Get output on: Energy consumption; CO2 emissions; US benchmark against the Architecture 2030; (Zero-Carbon) Challenge

In addition, if you want to modify your building and assess what impact different options have on these factors, all you have to do is go back and make the required amends to the model or construction materials, etc. and re-run the analysis.

The IES and Google SketchUp connectivity
The direct link to VE-Ware takes the form of a Toolbar that sits within the SketchUp application. It is compatible with both the Free and Pro versions of Google SketchUp. The Toolbar also links to IES's other more detailed building performance analysis tools: the VE-Toolkits and the full Virtual Environment.

For many architects and other professionals in the building design and management industry, this level of integration with a mass market design tool is what they have been waiting for - it allows empowering analysis to be undertaken at the touch of a few buttons.

See the associated press release on the IES Google SketchUp plug-in for more information.

John Bacus, Product Manager of Google SketchUp, commented: "With SketchUp, we dreamed of a simple tool that would give people the ability to think fast and iterate often on complex building design problems.

With this release, IES is plugging a set of energy analysis tools into SketchUp at just the right level of complexity - enabling designers to think not just about how a building might look, but also how it will perform in a sustainable world."

This launch is a public beta and is being refined over the coming months.

Building Performance Analysis
Building performance analysis allows the study of how the orientation, shape, construction materials and room positioning etc. impacts on energy use and occupant comfort.

It also allows you to determine how effective solar shading, natural ventilation and other passive design strategies will be, and the feasibility of using innovative low-energy technologies and renewable energy sources.

IES
Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) Ltd. is a company at the forefront of the use and development of powerful building performance simulation tools:

VE-Ware: Free energy and carbon analysis tool which makes basic performance analysis widely available to anyone;

VE-Toolkits: mid-level tools that allow a variety of early stage sustainability energy, carbon, solar and daylight analyses to be undertaken at the touch of a few buttons;

The full VE: a powerful integrated suite of highly detailed performance analysis tools.

Related Links
VE-Ware download
Google SketchUp download

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