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The Building Technologies Office (BTO) collaborates with home builders, energy professionals, state and local governments, utilities, product manufacturers, educators, and researchers to accelerate the adoption of affordable technologies and techniques that enable high-performing and affordable existing and new homes. BTO’s residential programs include research, analysis, information, and partnerships geared toward developing and scaling high-performance building technologies and approaches that improve the affordability and comfort of our nation’s 120 million residential buildings to meet Americans’ need for resiliency and health while also supporting a reliable energy system.
Learn more about the RBI team and key residential programs in the links below.
Research/Field Validation
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The ABC Initiative integrates energy-efficiency solutions into highly productive U.S. construction practices for new buildings and retrofits.
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Building America has been a source of innovations in residential building energy performance, quality, affordability, and comfort for over 15 years.
Tools & Information
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The Building America Solution Center provides access to expert information on hundreds of high-performance construction topics.
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A variety of analysis to investigate costs, benefits, and environmental impacts of options to decarbonize residential buildings.
Partnerships
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The ABC Initiative integrates energy-efficiency solutions into highly productive U.S. construction practices for new buildings and retrofits.March 9, 2021
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Learn about the Buildings Upgrade Prize designed to help U.S. buildings transition to be more energy-efficient and clean energy-ready.January 15, 2025
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Ensuring training pathways for a diverse and qualified building efficiency workforce that enables high-performance buildings.
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The Home Energy Score™ provides homeowners, buyers, and renters directly comparable and credible information about a home’s energy use.
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Connecting homeowners with experienced contractors to help them understand their home energy use and identify improvements that increase performance.July 25, 2024
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Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition of 10 contests that challenge student teams to design and build full-size, solar-powered houses.
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ZEDD recognizes post-secondary institutions that prepare students for 21st century building careers.January 15, 2025
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DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes: The Home of the Future, Today!January 7, 2025
Information
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Resources to help local governments implement policies and programs to improve the energy efficiency of single-family and multifamily homes.
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BBRN connects energy-efficiency programs and partners to learn from one another to increase the number of homes that are energy efficient.
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Explore this repository for lessons learned, resources, and knowledge from program administrators and industry experts across the country.
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Quality installation checklists for homeowners and contractors help ensure maximum benefits from 20+ common home energy upgrades.
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Resources for consumers and lenders to select and finance energy-efficient manufactured homesAugust 29, 2024
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Open-source platform for national, regional and community scale housing stock energy efficiency analysis.