As Cooling Bills Rise, the Problem May Be Built In

As summer approaches and air conditioners begin their seasonal marathon, you probably know the room.

Too hot in the afternoon. Too cold in the morning. The system runs constantly, but never quite fixes it.

At home, it might be a bedroom that never cools down. In an office, it’s the conference room no one wants to book. Most people assume that’s just how the building works.

It’s not.

A building’s energy efficiency was likely decided years earlier, before the building was finished, before anyone moved in and before you had any say in it.

Melanie Goerke (PTMBA ’26)

“Buildings do not perform because we intend them to perform now,” says Melanie Goerke (PTMBA ’26), a senior sustainability consultant and recent graduate of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. “They perform because thousands of early decisions either support that outcome or quietly undermine it.”

Goerke studies how those decisions get made and why they’re often invisible to the people most affected by them.

The timing of her research matters. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association projects the average cost of electricity for home cooling will reach $778 this summer, up 8.5% from last year and nearly 37% since 2020.

At the same time, more building owners are facing pressure to measure and improve how their properties perform. Building performance standards, active or expanding in a growing number of states and cities, require owners to track and report energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions, and in some cases, meet performance targets; if not met, hefty fines are intended to be imposed on property management teams and building owners.

The Decisions You Don’t See

When people think about high-performing buildings, they often focus on visible features: efficient equipment, renewable energy systems or sustainability certifications. But many of the most important factors are harder to see.

Insulation continuity. Moisture control. Maintenance access. Whether systems were designed to work together.

By the time those details surface in construction, they are often already constrained.

“By the time insulation is a line item, many of the decisions that determine whether it can actually perform well have already been made,” Goerke says.

Those choices shape long-term operating costs, energy use and maintenance, and whether a building performs as promised. Many projects, she argues, are built on assumed performance rather than verified performance.

“Where are we assuming performance instead of verifying it?” is one of the questions she encourages leaders to ask earlier.

Cheap Now, Expensive Later

When systems are overlooked or underspecified, the consequences surface over time: higher energy bills, uneven temperatures, condensation, equipment strain and ongoing maintenance issues.

Fixing those problems later can cost three to five times more than addressing them during design.

“The frustrating part is that most of this is preventable,” Goerke says.

A Gap Between Knowledge and Decisions

The challenge is not a lack of technical knowledge. It is a gap between those who understand building performance and those who make decisions about cost, timing and risk.

“The missing link is translation,” Goerke says. “Turning technical value into the language of risk, return and long-term performance.”

Without that translation, better choices can look like expensive extras that get cut early in the process.

Influence Is Moving Upstream

For most people, these decisions remain invisible, but their effects are not. They show up in everyday experience: rooms that never feel comfortable, systems that run constantly, utility bills that seem higher than they should be.

The good news for future building projects is that Goerke sees a broader shift underway: influence in complex projects is moving upstream, toward the early conversations where owners, developers, project managers and financial decision-makers set budgets, priorities and risk thresholds.

As expectations around cost, energy performance and resilience increase, more organizations are asking different questions earlier in the process: Where are we assuming performance instead of verifying it? What is inexpensive to cut now but costly to fix later? Who needs to be in the room before decisions are locked?

In practice, that means bringing technical experts, contractors and performance specialists into the room while budgets and priorities are still being shaped, not after key decisions have already been locked.

“The most important person is often not the one at the end,” she says. “It’s the one shaping the assumptions at the beginning.”

From Technical Insight to Business Decision

Goerke’s work sits at the intersection of sustainability, construction and building performance, where technical choices often become long-term business outcomes.

“Sustainability is not just about ideals; it is about execution,” she says.

That execution depends not only on expertise, but on influence: who is in the room, what questions are asked and whether technical value can be translated into decisions about cost, risk and return.

“The biggest shift was realizing that technical expertise alone is not enough. If you want to change outcomes, you have to understand how decisions get made.”

Long Before You Notice

The next time a room feels off, it may be tempting to treat it as a chance inconvenience.

Adjust the thermostat. Call maintenance. Move on.

But more often, Goerke said, those problems are not random. They are the visible effects of earlier choices: assumptions that were never verified, systems that were not fully coordinated or performance details that were easy to cut before they became expensive to fix.

“The choices people never see,” Goerke says, “are often the ones they live with every day.”