During a live online chat at the White House earlier this week, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that 24 projects are receiving a total of $21 million in technical assistance to reduce the energy used in their commercial buildings.
The initiative, supported with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will connect commercial building owners and operators with teams including researchers at DOE’s National Laboratories and private sector building experts. The teams will design, construct, measure, and test low-energy building plans.
The goal is to achieve 30 percent measured energy savings in existing buildings and 50 percent energy savings in new construction projects. About half of the two dozen, three-year projects focus on energy efficiency upgrades for existing buildings.
The projects are funded with a public/private cost-sharing agreement, where the building owners and operators contribute at least 20 percent. Building owners and operators do not receive direct funding.
The following is a list of the selected projects:
· Cascadia Center for Sustainable Design and Construction; The Bullitt Foundation; Seattle, Washington
· Center for Alternative, Renewable Energy, Technology and Training; Clark Atlanta University; Atlanta, Georgia
· The College of Architecture + Planning at the University of Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah
· The Defense Commissary Agency; Lackland Air Force Base; San Antonio, Texas
· Grand Valley State University; Allendale, Michigan
· Hines; Somerset, New Jersey
· The Home Depot; Rocklin, California
· Living City Block; Denver, Colorado
· The LOOP at the University of California; Mesa Lane Partners; Santa Barbara, California
· Long Beach Gas and Oil; Long Beach, California
· Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Cambridge, Massachusetts
· Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center; Portland, Oregon
· Shy Brothers Farm; Westport, Massachusetts
· Sierra Nevada Job Corps; Reno, Nevada
· Smart Grid Development; North Kingstown, Rhode Island
· Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Los Angeles, California
· University of California Merced; Merced, California
· University of South Carolina; Columbia, South Carolina
· U.S. Army; Fort Bragg, North Carolina
· U.S. General Services Administration; Portsmouth, New Hampshire
· U.S. General Services Administration; Region 9 locations
· U.S. General Services Administration; San Francisco
· Walmart; two locations to be determined