2025 was a year of perseverance for the MUSH (Municipalities, Universities, Schools, and Hospitals) market. Publicly owned facilities across the country faced relentless challenges while remaining operational and serving their constituents and communities. It was a lot of change all at once, and most of it landed on already-stretched facility teams.
Budgets were impacted with administrative and policy changes; labor shortages intensified as facility staff and skilled trades became harder to retain; competing priorities and uncertainty slowed decision timelines; and deferred maintenance grew as critical system upgrades were pushed aside while everyone waited to see how funding and policy would shake out.
With 2026 underway, the MUSH market is entering its first full year under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act amid aging infrastructure, energy volatility, and rising resilience and electrification demands.
While each of the following factors has been developing over several years, they have become particularly influential as we enter this year.
Here are four factors influencing MUSH energy and building infrastructure retrofit projects.
Electricity demand in the United States continues to rise. This growth reflects broad demand increases across the commercial and industrial sectors, driven in part by the electrification of building systems, transportation, and load-intensive facilities such as data centers. Infrastructure that was adequate in the past is now being pushed toward capacity limits. At the same time, many regions are seeing higher wholesale and retail electricity prices as increased demand intersects with the outcomes of recent capacity auctions by regional grid operators. For MUSH facility teams and Energy Service Company (ESCO) partners, this means deeper efficiency measures — from lighting and HVAC controls to demand management strategies — are critical to managing the load and reducing peak demand use.
Smart technology and connectivity have matured to the point where they’re now standard in energy and infrastructure retrofit projects. Lighting retrofits now routinely include networked controls; HVAC systems are equipped with supervisory controls and fault-detection tools; and smart meters are able to track consumption at a more granular level. The shift is performance-driven: connected building systems deliver additional efficiency gains and operational benefits beyond what standalone equipment can achieve. Connectivity also reduces the burden on short-staffed facility teams by enabling remote monitoring and automated diagnostics.
Capital constraints remain one of the biggest barriers for the MUSH market when it comes to retrofitting building and energy infrastructure. Even when needs are clear, projects often stall because annual budgets, bond capacity, and appropriations can only stretch so far. While performance-based contracting has long provided an alternative to traditional capital funding, the past several years have seen a notable expansion of energy-as-a-service models. These models allow facility teams to procure building improvements as an operating expense rather than a large, upfront capital outlay, spreading costs over time and making upgrades more attainable within existing budget structures, while shifting risk to the provider and reducing the burden on facilities teams. As-a-service models have been used in the private sector for years and are now being evaluated in the MUSH market.
Within the ESCO and retrofitting space, resilience has historically been associated with the federal market, but as extreme weather events continue to disrupt schools, universities, hospitals, and municipal facilities, it is becoming a growing priority for MUSH facility teams across the country. Beyond weather, increasing strain on the electric grid, rising outage frequency, and the need to maintain essential community services are pushing facilities to think beyond pure efficiency and toward local energy resilience. Distributed energy solutions—such as solar, battery storage, microgrids, and backup generation—are now often included in retrofit projects for their ability to keep buildings functional during grid interruptions and high-demand periods. For MUSH facilities that often serve as community shelters, emergency coordination centers, or critical service hubs, these systems enable buildings to support local infrastructure. As a result, resilience and distributed energy are expanding the retrofit stack beyond traditional lighting and HVAC upgrades to include supply-side and continuity-focused measures.
Tying it All Together
The expanding stack of technologies, financing models, and resilience measures is opening the door to more impactful, comprehensive retrofit projects. To capitalize on these opportunities, MUSH facilities project partners need tools that make retrofit delivery faster, clearer, and easier to execute. SnapCount enables a connected retrofit workflow — from site audits to proposals to implementation — reducing friction across the process and helping teams deliver better projects with fewer bottlenecks.