SEARCH · Search NASA
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
The Building Technologies Program (BTP) actively pursues the research, development, and adoption of technologies and strategies that advance the energy efficiency of U.S. commercial and residential buildings.
The Building Technologies Program (BTP) employs a balanced approach to making buildings more energy efficient. The three pillars of our program, research and development (R&D), market stimulation, and building and equipment standards, help meet our strategic vision.
Contact information for the Building Technologies Program.
The Vision, Mission, and Goals of the Building Technologies Program (BTP) focus on short term energy efficiency outcomes such as improved economic environment, enhanced comfort, and affordability that collectively benefit our nation. Long-term goals focus on helping secure our nation's energy independence.
This report identifies and characterizes commercially available products and emerging (near-commercial) technologies that benefited from the support of the Building Technologies Program (BTP) within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The investigation specifically focused on technology-oriented research and development (R&D) projects sponsored by BTP’s Emerging Technologies subprogram from 2005-2009.
The purpose of the project described in this report is to identify and characterize commercially available products and emerging (near-commercial) technologies that benefited from the support of the Building Technologies Program (BTP) within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The investigation specifically focused on technology-oriented research and development (R&D) projects funded by BTP’s Emerging Technologies subprogram from 2005-2011.
The Federal Justice40 Initiative directs at least 40% of the overall benefits of certain clean energy investments to flow to disadvantaged communities and requires that all federal programs covered by Justice40 consult stakeholders to determine the program benefits, and that the flow of benefits to disadvantaged communities is tracked and reported. Unequal distribution of benefits, in terms of access to clean energy research, design, development, and deployment, can disproportionately benefit or burden certain communities. This can result in higher rates of pollution, negative health effects, and increased energy burdens and insecurities in disadvantaged communities. Programs focused on decarbonizing the built environment can enhance health, quality of life, and economic opportunities for impacted communities. This guidance document, developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office, provides best practices and approaches for incorporating energy justice and equity principles into building technology deployment activities. It provides best practices and recommendations for communicating with and involving disadvantaged communities and target building sectors in program activities, along with methods to monitor and report the distribution of benefits to these sectors. This document lays out a set of strategies, metrics, and best practices that can be implemented over time to apply energy justice and equity approaches, whether the program is just starting out or ongoing. Although this guidance was designed for Building Technologies Office technology deployment programs, the best practices, recommendations, and methods can be valuable to any program concerned with the equitable deployment of clean energy technologies. The goal of this project is to enable the equitable development, deployment, and adoption of clean energy technologies and practices.
The 2013 Building Technologies Office Program Peer Review Report summarizes the results of the 2013 Building Technologies Office (BTO) peer review, which was held in Washington, D.C., on April 2–4, 2013. The review was attended by over 300 participants and included presentations on 59 BTO-funded projects: 29 from BTO’s Emerging Technologies Program, 20 from the Commercial Buildings Integration Program, 6 from the Residential Buildings Integration Program, and 4 from the Building Energy Codes Program. This report summarizes the scores and comments provided by the independent reviewers for each project.
This fact sheet is an overview of the U.S. Department of Energy's Building Technologies program.
The Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance report on actions to accelerate adoption of energy efficiency in the Midwest through regional collaborations with state and local governments, utilities, industry, environmental and consumer groups and other stakeholders in a 13 state region (IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, NE, ND, OH, SD and WI). MEEA collaborated with multiple Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE) programs, including the Buildings Technologies Program (BTP), Office of Strategic Programs (OSP), Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs (WIP), and Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) to further energy efficiency efforts in the Midwest. In addition, MEEA collaborated with other Regional Energy Efficiency Organizations (REEOs) such as the Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast REEOs. Such alignment among all REEOs and with DOE sought to build increased workforce capacities nationwide to design, plan, deliver and verify energy efficiency solutions and make individual REEOs more successful in reaching their objectives. The proposed work accelerated deployment of DOE initiatives in local and regional markets, as well as coordinated the activities of each REEO for the dissemination of best practices.
Building Technologies Office's residential buildings integration project
Building Technologies Office's residential buildings integration project
This report summarizes research investigating the technical and economic feasibility of several pilot deep energy retrofits, or retrofits that save 30% to 50% or more on a whole-house basis while increasing comfort, durability, combustion safety, and indoor air quality. The work is being conducted for the U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies Program as part of the Building America Program. As part of the overall program, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers are collecting and analyzing a comprehensive dataset that describes pre- and post-retrofit energy consumption, retrofit measure cost, health and comfort impacts, and other pertinent information for each home participating in the study. The research and data collection protocol includes recruitment of candidate residences, a thorough test-in audit, home energy modeling, and generation of retrofit measure recommendations, implementation of the measures, test-out, and continued evaluation. On some homes, more detailed data will be collected to disaggregate energy-consumption information. This multi-year effort began in October 2010. To date, the PNNL team has performed test-in audits on 51 homes in the marine, cold, and hot-humid climate zones, and completed 3 retrofits in Texas, 10 in Florida, and 2 in the Pacific Northwest. Two of the retrofits are anticipated to save 50% or more in energy bills and the others - savings are in the 30% to 40% range. Fourteen other retrofits are under way in the three climate zones. Metering equipment has been installed in seven of these retrofits - three in Texas, three in Florida, and one in the Pacific Northwest. This report is an interim update, providing information on the research protocol and status of the PNNL deep energy retrofit project as of December, 2011. The report also presents key findings and lessons learned, based on the body of work to date. In addition, the report summarizes the status of the PNNL Lab Homes that are new manufactured homes procured with minimal energy-efficiency specifications typical of existing homes in the region, and sited on the PNNL campus. The Lab Homes serve as a flexible test facility (the first of its kind in the Pacific Northwest) to rapidly evaluate energy-efficient and grid-smart technologies that are applicable to residential construction.
To provide analytic support of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of the Building Technology Program (BTP), NREL developed a Microsoft Excel-based tool to provide an open and objective comparison of the hundreds of investment opportunities available to BTP. This tool uses established methodologies to evaluate the energy savings and cost of those savings.
To provide analytic support of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of the Building Technology Program (BTP), NREL developed a Microsoft Excel-based tool to provide an open and objective comparison of the hundreds of investment opportunities available to BTP. This tool uses established methodologies to evaluate the energy savings and cost of those savings.
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Building Technologies Program s goal of developing high-performance, energy efficient buildings will require more cost-effective, durable, energy efficient building envelopes. Forty-eight percent of the residential end-use energy consumption is spent on space heating and air conditioning. Reducing envelope-generated heating and cooling loads through application of phase change material (PCM)-enhanced envelope components can facilitate maximizing the energy efficiency of buildings. Field-testing of prototype envelope components is an important step in estimating their energy benefits. An innovative phase change material (nano-PCM) was developed with PCM encapsulated with expanded graphite (interconnected) nanosheets, which is highly conducive for enhanced thermal storage and energy distribution, and is shape-stable for convenient incorporation into lightweight building components. During 2012, two test walls with cellulose cavity insulation and prototype PCM-enhanced interior wallboards were installed in a natural exposure test (NET) facility at Charleston, SC. The first test wall was divided into four sections, which were separated by wood studs and thin layers of foam insulation. Two sections contained nano-PCM-enhanced wallboards: one was a three-layer structure, in which nano-PCM was sandwiched between two gypsum boards, and the other one had PCM dispersed homogeneously throughout graphite nanosheets-enhanced gypsum board. The second test wall also contained two sections with interior PCM wallboards; one contained nano-PCM dispersed homogeneously in gypsum and the other was gypsum board containing a commercial microencapsulated PCM (MEPCM) for comparison. Each test wall contained a section covered with gypsum board on the interior side, which served as control or a baseline for evaluation of the PCM wallboards. The walls were instrumented with arrays of thermocouples and heat flux transducers. Further, numerical modeling of the walls containing the nano-PCM wallboards were performed to determine their actual impact on wall-generated heating and cooling loads. The models were first validated using field data, and then used to perform annual simulations using Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) weather data. This article presents the measured performance and numerical analysis to evaluate the energy-saving potential of the nano-PCM-enhanced building components.
Vapor compression (VC) is by far the most dominant technology for meeting all cooling and refrigeration needs around the world. It is a mature technology with the efficiency of modern compressors approaching the theoretical limit, but its environmental footprint remains a global problem. VC refrigerants such as hydrochloroflurocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are a significant source of green house gas emissions, and their global warming potential (GWP) is as high as 1000 times that of CO2 [Buildings Energy Data Book (Building Technologies Program, Department of Energy, 2009)]. There is an urgent need to develop an alternative high-efficiency cooling technology that is affordable and environmentally friendly [A. D. Little, Report For Office of Building Technology State and Community Programs, Department of Energy, 2001]. Here, we demonstrate that elastocaloric cooling (EC), a type of solid-state cooling mechanism based on the latent heat of reversible martensitic transformation, can have the coefficient of performance as high as 1 1, with a directly measured Delta T of 17 degrees C. The solid-state refrigerant of EC completely eliminates the use of any GWP refrigerants including HCFCs/HFCs. (C) 2012 American Institute. of Physics. [http://dx.doiorg/10.1063/1.4746257]