Book excerpt: This book was written to give energy-involved professionals the tools they need to take their energy audits to the next level, and use them to accurately predict a building's future energy use and true savings potential. Going beyond the conventional energy audit, which can lead to projections which are frequently off by as much as 20%, this book provides detailed guidelines on how to use the new tool, the investment grade audit (IGA), which enables prediction of savings with much greater accuracy. Building on the traditional audit, the IGA requires the addition of a "risk assessment component" which evaluates conditions in a specific building and/or process and reduces the level of uncertainty as to how proposed energy efficiency measures will really behave over time. The authors have covered every aspect of the IGA, including risk management, the "people" factor, measurement and verification, financing issues, report presentation guidelines, and master planning strategies.