Positive Impact

Provides access to empirical data on the actual energy performance, as well as physical and operational characteristics of commercial and residential buildings.

Locations

Nationwide

Partners

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Building Energy Inc.

EERE Investment

$3.9 million over 3 years

Clean Energy Sector

Energy-saving homes, buildings, and manufacturing

In June 2013, the Building Technologies Office (BTO) launched the Buildings Performance Database (BPD). Currently, residential and commercial buildings account for approximately 70% of electricity consumption in the United States. One of the primary challenges to expanding the building energy-efficiency retrofit market is the lack of empirical data on building energy performance. This deficiency makes it difficult for building owners and managers to identify the best efficiency investment opportunities and limits the ability of public-sector actors to design and implement programs that are tailored to local market conditions and trends.

The BPD addresses this barrier by compiling the largest free, publicly accessible database of residential and commercial building energy performance information. The BPD currently contains information on more than 750,000 commercial, residential and multifamily buildings across the country, and new records are added regularly. Users can analyze trends in the characteristics and energy performance of similar buildings, discover opportunities for improvement, and forecast project performance and risk using statistical analyses. More than 8,000 users have accessed the BPD to date.

Developed through BTO by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Building Energy Inc., the database meets the usability needs of public agencies, building owners and managers, contractors, energy-efficiency program administrators, and financial institutions. BTO is conducting ongoing outreach to public and private organizations to contribute data. Collected data points include building location, age, size and function, electricity and fuel consumption, equipment information, and operational characteristics. Contributed datasets are reformatted, cleaned, and stripped of identifiable characteristics—leaving users with a large empirical dataset that can be used for a range of analyses.

The Buildings Technologies Office (BTO) leads a vast network of research and industry partners to continually develop innovative, cost-effective energy saving solutionsbetter products, better new homes, better ways to improve older homes, and better buildings in which we work, shop, and lead our everyday lives.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) success stories highlight the positive impact of its work with businesses, industry partners, universities, research labs, and other entities.