The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Better Buildings Initiative promotes energy efficiency in U.S. commercial buildings through collaboration, technical assistance, and resource development in partnership with building-industry stakeholders. As a core part of this initiative, the Better Buildings Alliance focuses on technology deployment through innovative and successful technology campaigns. Run by the DOE Building Technologies Office’s (BTO) Commercial Buildings Integration program, these campaigns help new technologies gain widespread adoption and building owners achieve significant energy savings.

BTO identifies technologies that have the potential to deliver significant energy-efficiency benefits and launches campaigns to deploy these technologies across thousands of buildings, stimulating the market and creating a widespread and lasting impact. Led by experts from DOE’s national labs, campaigns partner with industry to provide technical assistance, implementation guidance, and recognition of exemplary projects and practices. This deployment effort also supports follow-on research and development, tracking of savings, and identification of more market opportunities.

Current Technology Campaigns

Recognizing the need to improve the performance of the walls, windows and roofs of U.S. buildings, as well as the untapped value of integrating lighting with other building systems, the Better Buildings Alliance and its partners launched two new campaigns at the Better Buildings Summit in June 2020: the Building Envelope Campaign and the Integrated Lighting Campaign. These newly launched campaigns are actively seeking interested partners to get involved, with deadlines approaching soon.

Building Envelope Campaign

The Building Envelope Campaign (BEC) drives investment in comfortable, energy-efficient buildings by improving the performance of walls, windows, roof, and foundation—the primary thermal barrier between a building’s interior and the exterior. The campaign lays out goals for building-envelope performance, highlights energy savings opportunities, and offers direct technical support to building owners and managers.