Better Buildings Accelerators

Smart Labs
Smart Labs

Universities, federal agencies, national laboratories, hospitals, and corporations commit to advancing strategies that rapidly improve energy efficiency in laboratory buildings.
Zero Energy Districts
Zero Energy Districts

Districts demonstrate the practicality of taking action to cost effectively meet zero energy goals by completing a detailed energy master plan, business case, model, and development pathway.
Zero Energy Schools
Zero Energy Schools

States and school districts will work together to develop a road map for zero energy schools.
Clean Energy for Low Income Communities Accelerator
Clean Energy for Low Income Communities Accelerator

Develop plans to identify funding that will lead to the implementation of expanded installation of energy efficiency and distributed renewables in low-to-moderate income communities.
Combined Heat and Power for Resiliency
Combined Heat and Power for Resiliency

Develop plans for communities to capitalize on CHP’s strengths as a reliable, high efficiency, lower emissions electricity and heating/cooling source for critical infrastructure
Data Centers
Data Centers

Reduce the infrastructure energy intensity of one or more data centers by 25 percent over a period of five years.
Energy Savings Performance Contracting
Energy Savings Performance Contracting

Catalyze public-sector energy efficiency investments of $2 billion from January 2013 to December 2016 through the use of innovative and best-practice approaches to ESPC.
Home Energy Information
Home Energy Information

Expand the availability of energy information in residential real estate transactions to make energy-related information available to home buyers and sellers through multiple listing services and reports.
Home Upgrade Program
Home Upgrade Program

Minimize program costs while improving and expanding program savings through the use of information technology and adoption of common data standards to streamline data exchange.
Industrial Superior Energy Performance
Industrial Superior Energy Performance

Utilities and administrators are deploying SEP programs across their service territories and manufacturers are implementing SEP across a corporation or multiple plants.
Outdoor Lighting
Outdoor Lighting

Accelerate the adoption of high-efficiency outdoor lighting and improve system-wide replacement processes.
Sustainable Wastewater Infrastructure of the Future
Sustainable Wastewater Infrastructure of the Future

State, regional, and local agencies will work to improve the energy efficiency of water resource recovery facilities by at least 30 percent on their path to more sustainable infrastructure. 
Energy Data
Energy Data

Local governments joined forces with their local utilities to make it easier for building owners to get access to whole-building energy usage data for the purposes of benchmarking their buildings. As a result 2.6 million commercial customers nationwide will provide energy data access to building owners by 2017.

Better Buildings Accelerators are designed to demonstrate specific innovative policies and approaches, which will accelerate investment in
energy efficiency upon successful demonstration. Each Accelerator is a targeted, short-term, partner-focused activity designed to address persistent barriers that stand in the way of greater efficiency. There are 13 different Accelerators.