Inactive

The U.S. building stock – consisting of more than 123 million homes and 5.9 million commercial buildings – consumes 75% of the nation’s electricity, 40% of the nation’s total energy, and accounts for ... The U.S. building stock – consisting of more than 123 million homes and 5.9 million commercial buildings – consumes 75% of the nation’s electricity, 40% of the nation’s total energy, and accounts for 35% of the country's CO2 emissions. Within commercial and residential buildings, space heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and water heating account for over 60% of energy use. To meet the Biden Administration’s ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals and Justice40 commitments, existing buildings across a wide variety of uses, sizes, vintages, and climates must be upgraded rapidly and equitably. Historically, most existing programs designed to deliver energy-efficient building upgrades have not scaled, and upgrades remain complicated, costly, disruptive, and undervalued. To solve these challenges, DOE seeks to support and recognize energy efficiency and efficient electrification initiative innovations in areas such as: project financing, project aggregation and customer acquisition, equipment ownership structures, soft cost reduction, workforce training, contractor development, alignment with affordable housing constraints, communications, community engagement, and project delivery. The U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies Office (BTO) has announced a new competitive prize, the Buildings Upgrade Prize (“Buildings UP”) to reward innovative initiatives that address persistent administrative, financial, social and other barriers to improving building energy efficiency and reducing onsite emissions. Buildings UP seeks to spur the development and expansion of innovative building upgrade programs that: • Accelerate building upgrades for efficiency and onsite emissions reductions. Winning concepts will advance significant innovations for rapidly increasing retrofits beyond current best practices in the applicant’s identified area of focus. • Are scalable and replicable. Winning concepts will have applicability across important building type(s) climate zone(s), and community type(s). • Accelerate holistic and lasting energy efficiency and efficient electrification initiative development (e.g., through supportive infrastructure, financing, and funding) with support from DOE/NREL’s robust technical support network of American-Made Challenge “Power Connectors.” • Benefit underserved communities. The prize is structured to ensure that at least 40% of the initiative benefits accrue to equity-equity-eligible buildings (see Section 3.5 for full definition), their occupants, and surrounding communities. Winning teams in the Equity-Centered Innovation Pathway will receive higher prize amounts, which can support deep and targeted engagement with communities being served.