Utilities maintain energy infrastructure and provide electricity, natural gas, and other resources to their residential, commercial, industrial, and other sector customers. They are working to cut energy consumption in their own facilities and fleets, and to make the same efforts possible for their customers through energy retrofit, demand side management, and other utility incentive programs. They aim to lead by example in their facilities by implementing innovative and energy efficient measures to demonstrate real-world, cost-effective strategies.
The Better Buildings & Better Plants Initiative’s 2025 Progress Update highlights progress from more than 650 partners and introduces the 2025 Goal Achievers.
Through DOE's Better Buildings & Better Plants Initiative, more than 950 commercial, public, industrial, and residential organizations share their proven energy efficiency strategies and inspire others to tap into the continued potential for energy efficiency.
Dedicated to bringing you the latest actionable insights on today's energy-savings landscape, the Better Buildings & Better Plants Webinar Series is a chance to explore the topics and trends that affect your organization with industry experts and peers.
Featured Solutions
A cross-functional effort leveraged energy and water efficiency improvements including lighting retrofits, green plumbing and toilet retrofits, fan system upgrades, and the installation of an energy efficient chiller, all of which brought 37% in energy savings and over $1.7 million savings in energy cost.
The Energy Data Accelerator Toolkit is a collection of resources enabling other utilities and communities to learn and benefit from the work of the Accelerator, specifically on how to gain data needed for benchmarking.
Other Resources
Fact Sheet
This fact sheet highlights the energy resilience and reliability benefits that CHP systems can offer to critical infrastructure facilities, provides information on current and potential CHP installations at critical facilities, and reviews details on the economic impacts of grid outages to industrial and commercial operations.
Guidance
This resource highlights examples of utility services and incentives that Better Buildings partners have leveraged to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings. Using this guide, organizations can work with their utility provider to better understand if these or other energy efficiency programs are available to them.
Webinar
This 2020 Better Buildings & Better Plants Summit session enlisted some of the top experts in critical facilities like data centers, laboratories, hospitals, wastewater treatment plants, and correctional facilities, who provided a high-level overview of their fields and answered attendee questions.
This 2021 Better Buildings & Better Plants Summit session featured innovations in energy planning for resilience at critical facilities, including wastewater treatment plants, correctional facilities, data centers, and labs.