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Building energy design is traditionally performed using retrogressive data sets (e.g., the past 30 years of weather data). The implied presumption has always been that this data will cycle back and forth around relatively static baseline averages. With increasing evidence that some level of climate change may be occurring, it is natural for building owners, developers, designers, and managers to question whether and to what extent these fundamental climate assumptions may be altered in future years. Depending on a building's locality, these could take the form of increasing or decreasing trends in seasonal average temperatures, daily maximum and minimum temperatures, relative humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, cloud cover, and total precipitation. These assumptions are crucial, because a typical building must remain habitable for 30-50 years (or longer) and provide its owner(s) with the maximum possible return on a sizeable capital investment.This article will demonstrate how building owners and developers can employ intelligent strategies to maximize energy efficiency while concurrently meeting building energy requirements and retaining significant flexibility to cope with potential variations in local climate. Data from existing buildings that currently exhibit outstanding energy performance (e.g., net zero energy buildings, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design [LEED®] Gold-and Platinum-certified buildings, buildings with ENERGY STAR® ratings above 90) will be utilized to identify energy efficiency and renewable energy production techDownloaded by [Temple University Libraries] at 12:44 21 November 2014 15 Spring 2013, Vol. 32, No. 4 nologies that can further improve energy performance and reduce risk. This article will demonstrate that, by implementing these types of adaptive strategies, the building sector can more nimbly respond to potential climate variations.