Summer 2026 has made an already familiar problem nearly impossible to ignore. In early July, a heat dome fell over the central and eastern United States, breaking daily temperature records from Newark to Boston, with heat indices reaching 115°F in some areas, according to the National Weather Service.
The same week, grid operator PJM Interconnection forecast electricity demand of more than 166,000 megawatts—enough to break an all-time record set in 2006—prompting the U.S. Department of Energy to issue emergency orders allowing data centers to be curtailed and power plants to exceed normal emissions limits just to keep the lights on.
That combination—record heat and a grid stretched to its limits—is precisely the challenge ASHRAE’s new president, Sarah Maston, pointed to in her inaugural address at the organization’s annual conference this summer. Maston, who also serves as Director of Commissioning and Energy Services at Colliers Project Leaders, told attendees that after decades of progress on energy efficiency, indoor air quality (IAQ), and carbon reduction, the field’s top priority must be building resilience.
A building that’s hardened against extreme heat but leaves occupants sweating through the workday isn’t resilient. Similarly, a building that keeps temperatures comfortable by running HVAC systems at maximum capacity isn’t efficient. And, one that solves for energy and comfort while ignoring IAQ creates a different kind of risk for occupants.
As extreme heat, weather, and wildfires increasingly challenge the built environment, resilient building technology must comprehensively address energy efficiency, thermal comfort, indoor environmental quality, and occupant well-being. In the real world, these priorities compete for the same capital, the same square footage, and the same mechanical systems.
Comfort Shouldn’t Cost More Energy
Extreme heat puts insulation and envelope performance at the center of this balancing act for facilities managers. Every degree of heat that a building’s envelope fails to hold back must be made up for by mechanical cooling, which drives costs up and strains the grid during peak hours when existing energy infrastructure can least afford it.
Advancements including structurally insulated panels and phase-change materials are changing that math by absorbing and releasing heat passively, smoothing out temperature swings without asking compressors to work harder. As utility costs and demand-related charges rise, these passive strategies are shifting from a comfort upgrade to a load-management strategy that happens to keep occupants comfortable, too.
Air Quality Can’t Be an Afterthought
Sealing a building against heat and humidity raises the stakes on IAQ. Pressurization technology, long associated with healthcare and cleanroom environments, is increasingly relevant to everyday commercial buildings because it reduces air leakage and helps control what moves in and out of a space.
Done well, this improves both energy performance and indoor environmental quality at once. Done poorly, a tightly sealed building can trap contaminants and humidity, undermining the very occupant experience and health outcomes that resilience is supposed to protect. The technology has to be paired with ventilation and filtration strategies that keep fresh air moving even as envelopes get tighter.
Data Is the Only Way to Manage the Trade-offs
None of this works as a set of one-off decisions. Facilities managers need real-time visibility into how energy use, temperature, humidity, and air quality interact across a building, which is why sensor networks and building control systems are becoming as important as the mechanical equipment they monitor.
As artificial intelligence adds capacity to interpret that data, buildings can shift from reactive adjustments to predictive ones, trimming loads before a heat event peaks rather than scrambling once occupants are already uncomfortable. In a grid-constrained future, that predictive capability may be the difference between a building that rides out an emergency order gracefully and one that doesn’t.
Building the Next Chapter of Resilience
None of these technologies are silver bullets, and none of them work in isolation. Facilities managers can make progress in building resilience by treating energy efficiency, thermal comfort, indoor environmental quality, and occupant well-being as a single, interconnected design problem rather than four separate line items. While it’s a more challenging conversation than picking a single priority and optimizing for it, it’s also the conversation that ASHRAE’s leadership (and this summer’s headlines) are telling us we can no longer avoid.
The buildings that successfully weather the next decade of extreme heat won’t be the ones that chose efficiency over comfort, or comfort over air quality. They’ll be the ones designed and operated with all four priorities in view from the start.
Michael Lorenz is the VP of technology at Armstrong World Industries.