By Stuart Berjansky
In the last days of 2025, several organizations released reports predicting greater focus on energy efficiency in the new year, citing business trends aimed at leaner and smarter facility operations.
2026 will likely see more emphasis on the integration of building and energy systems to reduce costs and boost performance, according to JLL’s end-of-year Global Real Estate Outlook. In the same vein, December’s Siemens infrastructure Transition Monitor named energy efficiency as the top infrastructure priority based on a biennial survey of 1,400 senior executives and government officials – up from seventh place in 2023.
Meanwhile, cutting operating costs was cited as the primary driver of efficiency and sustainability initiatives in data released by the Association for Smarter Homes & Buildings (ASHB).
Lighting Upgrades, Incentives and the End of First-Generation LEDs
For commercial lighting, all these findings bolster the importance of installing not only the most efficacious fixtures and controls available, but also products with paybacks sweetened by financial incentives and rebates. They also come as another timely factor is in play: finally, after illuminating offices, warehouses, schools, shopping centers and other buildings for over a decade, first-generation light emitting diodes (LED) are at the end of their useful life and must be replaced. As building owners and operators consider lighting upgrades, utilities and energy efficiency programs across North America are rolling out newly updated incentive policies aimed at future-proofing the value of those investments.
Incentives for lighting fixtures and controls available to commercial and industrial electric utility customers in about three-quarters of North America are based on efficacy and quality specifications set by the non-profit DesignLights Consortium (DLC). The DLC began implementing a major update to those specifications – the first in five years – on January 5, 2026.
DLC SSL V6.0 and the Qualified Products List
Developed through a nearly two-year stakeholder process, the DLC’s Solid-State Lighting (SSL) V6.0 technical requirements usher in new minimum performance standards for incentivizing products that save energy and boost building functionality through next-generation LEDs and lighting controls. Products that meet these criteria are included on the DLC’s SSL Qualified Products List (QPL), a publicly available resource that enables users to search, sort, and compare rebate-eligible lighting and controls products after creating a free myDLC account.
A host of professions use the DLC’s SSL (LED) and Networked Lighting Controls (NLC) QPLs, including facility owners and managers, contractors, architects and designers. With electricity rates rising across the country, choosing listed, rebate-eligible products as a cost-saving strategy is obviously important. In addition, building professionals rely on the third-party verification built into the QPLs to confidently screen and vet products to ensure they’re defensible in the face of government and institutional requirements for energy efficiency, minimum performance and quality.
Controls, Connectivity and Deeper Energy Savings
The December ASHB report noted increasing interest in occupancy-based controls, “reflecting a growing understanding of how occupancy patterns can optimize energy consumption.” This finding dovetails with priorities embedded in the DLC’s SSL V6.0 technical requirements. Always viewed by the DLC as a keystone energy-saving and smart building-enabling strategy, a sharper focus on controls is a hallmark of the DLC’s new policy. Besides increasing the energy efficiency threshold for DLC-listed commercial lighting products by an average of 14 percent, SSL V6.0 seeks to move the lighting market toward greater controllability through provisions that streamline the pairing of lighting controls with LED fixtures.
The SSL V6.0 technical requirements and updated QPL pave the way for building managers and other decision makers to take LED lighting savings to the next level by further encouraging integration of lighting and controls. Besides input from a wide array of lighting industry stakeholders, the new policy was informed by research showing a vast potential for deep energy savings waiting to be tapped through wider adoption of NLCs.
Integrating Lighting Controls and HVAC Systems
NLCs with occupancy sensors can detect when building spaces are vacant and then turn off or dim lighting when and where it’s not needed to save energy. DLC research has demonstrated that NLCs can reduce lighting energy consumption by an average of about 50 percent more than is possible with non-networked energy-efficient LED lights, and even deeper savings are possible by integrating controlled LED lighting with other building systems such as HVAC.
A 2023 DLC report, “Economic Potential of Networked Lighting Controls in Commercial Buildings: Tapping the Added Value of HVAC Connections“, showed that pairing lighting controls with HVAC systems to deliver occupancy signals can save up to 30 percent of energy used for HVAC and 20 percent of a building’s total electric energy consumption.
Overcoming Industry Silos with Practical Tools
Adoption of NLC-HVAC integration as an energy-saving strategy has lagged, however, due in large part to the siloed nature of the two industries. A working group the DLC convened in 2023 reported that a lack of communication between lighting and HVAC professionals is the major hurdle to broader adoption. The DLC set out to remedy this last year, releasing an NLC-HVAC Integration Toolkit designed to dissolve barriers in communication and improve collaboration between the professional worlds of lighting and HVAC. The toolkit is meant to encourage and facilitate better coordinated projects that yield bigger energy and cost savings in a wider array of facilities.
It includes five components:
- a decision tree to help building managers and contractors determine whether a project is a suitable candidate for integration and avoid cases where success is unlikely;
- a template of a sample construction integration specification;
- a handbook that concisely describes the basic information that each group involved in an NLC-HVAC integration project needs to know, with a glossary and references to relevant standards;
- a responsibility matrix that presents an integration project in terms of major tasks and indicates which party is responsible for each; and
- 19 Case Studies presenting successful integration examples.
Together, the DLC’s latest policy around rebate-eligible commercial lighting (including lighting that mitigates light pollution) and the NLC-HVAC Integration Toolkit are novel tools intended to help building managers, engineers, designers and other lighting decision makers successfully navigate an array of complex considerations as they work toward saving energy dollars and achieving sustainability goals. For more information, check out the DLC’s toolkit webinar and our blog on the new technical requirements.
Stuart Berjansky is Technical Director at the DesignLights Consortium.