| Building Technology and Urban Systems

About Us +
Researchers in the Building Technology & Urban Systems Division (BTUS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory develop data and technologies that increase energy efficiency and improve the health, safety and comfort of building occupants, in the United States and worldwide.

We work closely with industry partners, academics and government officials to achieve these goals, and share our research widely
Research +
We are at the forefront of cutting-edge research that redefines building technology and explores all areas of urban systems.

We have been leaders for decades in developing energy-efficient windows, improving indoor air quality, coming up with new ideas to fix the nation's electricity grid, and so much more.

Visit our research areas at the right to find out more.
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Publications +
Enjoy presentations from Building Technology & Urban systems research experts on a wide variety of topics in the areas of building energy efficiency, the electricity grid and how it relates to buildings and much more.
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Tools & Guides +
Explore our tools, guidebooks and software and download for free.

We offer a variety of technologies designed to simulate and model real-world circumstances to assist in energy-saving programs and help building owners build better buildings. These tools can help calculate performance of building systems like windows and shades, help consumers and builders pick the best windows for a variety of applications and much more.

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2025

Lin, Guanjing, John House, Yimin Chen, Jessica Granderson, and Wanpeng Zhang."Active multi-mode data analysis to improve fault diagnosis in AHUs."Energy and Buildings (2025) 115621. DOI

Marnay, Chris, Tao Xu, Yuko Hirase, Patricio Mendoza-Araya, Nikos Hatziargyriou, and Shuai Lu."Microgrids 2025 editorial."Applied Energy 381 (2025) 125348. DOI

2024

Kramer, Hannah, Nora Hart, Alexandra Duncan, Joshua Kace, Haley Tong, and Jessica Granderson."Building Performance Software: Portfolio-Level Capabilities and Applications." (2024). DOI

Satre-Meloy, Aven, Nuria Casquero-Modrego, Iain S Walker, and Brennan Less."Reducing the Cost of Home Energy Upgrades in the US: An Industry Survey."Journal of Building Engineering, October, 110939 (2024). DOI

Walker, Iain S, Brennan Less, Nuria Casquero-Modrego, Cara Lozinsky, and Michael D Sohn."The Impact of Simplified Window and Exhaust Fan Assumptions on Model- Based Predictions of Inter-Zonal Air Flow and Contaminant Transport in Multifamily Buildings."Proceedings of the 44th AIVC Conference, Dublin, Ireland. (2024).

Srinivasan, Pavitra, Nora Esram, Helen Chen, and Reshma Singh."A Proposed Evaluation Framework for New and Emerging LowEmbodied-Carbon Concrete Technologies." 2024 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2024). DOI

Less, Brennan, Iain S Walker, Sean Murphy, and Eric Fournier."Electrical Service Panel Capacity in California Households with Insights for Equitable Building Electrification."Proceedings of the ACEEE Summer Study 2024. ACEEE, Washington, DC (2024).

Singh, Reshma, Yashima Jain, Laura Wong, Mary Weigel, and Nicholas Ryan."From IMPEL to Impact: Lessons Learned in Accelerating Innovative Building Technologies."2024 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2024). DOI

Less, Brennan, and Iain S Walker."HVAC Heat Pump Upgrades and their Impact on Household Maximum Power Demand."Proceedings of the ACEEE Summer Study 2024. ACEEE, Washington, DC (2024).

Szum, Carolyn, Han Li, Robin Mitchell, Sydney Applegate, Billierae Engelman, Nicholas Long, Yassen Roussev, and Eric Noller."New U.S. Data Tools are Playing a Crucial Role in Decarbonizing Buildings at Speed, Scale, and Low Cost."2024 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2024). DOI

Casquero-Modrego, Nuria, M Venkatraman, and Iain S Walker."The Costs of Decarbonizing Multifamily Buildings in DACs and Rural Areas."2024 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) (2024). DOI

Ding, Chao, Jing Ke, Mark D Levine, and Nan Zhou."Potential of artificial intelligence in reducing energy and carbon emissions of commercial buildings at scale."Nature Communications 15 (2024). DOI

Robinson, Alastair, Samuel Fernandes, Tianzhen Hong, Sang Hoon Lee, Ronnen M Levinson, and Mary Ann Piette."Potential Urban Heat Island Countermeasures and Building Energy Efficiency Improvements in Los Angeles County." (2024).

Zhao, Haoran, Wanyu R Chan, Chrissi Antonopoulos, Eric Martin, Paul Francisco, Iain S Walker, and Brett C Singer."Mechanical Ventilation and IAQ in Recently Constructed US Homes."Indoor Air 2024 (2024).

Walker, Iain S, Brennan Less, Cara Lozinsky, David M Lorenzetti, Nuria Casquero-Modrego, and Michael D Sohn."Compartmentalization and Ventilation System Impacts on Air and Contaminant Transport for Multifamily Buildings."International Journal of Ventilation. (2024). DOI

Bhatia, Aviruch, Shanmukh Dontu, Vishal Garg, and Reshma Singh."Approach for energy efficient building design during early phase of design process."Energy Informatics 7.1 (2024). DOI

Zhao, Haoran, Iain S Walker, William W Delp, and Brett C Singer."Performance and usage of mechanical residential kitchen ventilation."ASHRAE Winter 2024 (2024).

2023

Crowe, Eliot, Yimin Chen, Hayden Reeve, David Yuill, Amir Ebrahimifakhar, Yuxuan Chen, Lucas Troup, Amanda Smith, and Jessica Granderson."Empirical Analysis of the Prevalence of HVAC Faults in Commercial Buildings." (2023). DOI

Wan, Shanshan, Mengnan Zhao, Yimin Chen, Shuyue Yang, Dongwei Qiu, and James Lo."A novel data-driven relationship inference approach for automatic data tagging in building heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems."Building and Environment Vol. No..246 (2023). DOI

de Mesquita, P. Jacob Bueno, Nuria Casquero-Modrego, Iain S Walker, Brennan Less, and Brett C Singer."Quantifying the Potential Health Impacts of Unvented Combustion in Homes – A Meta-Analysis."43rd AIVC-11th TightVent & 9th Venticool Conference, 4-5 October 2023, Copenhagen (2023).

Shackelford, Jordan, Alastair Robinson, Cynthia Regnier, and Sang Hoon Lee."Getting Beyond Widgets: Performance of Efficient Indoor Air Quality System Retrofit Packages for Schools." (2023).

Granderson, Jessica, Guanjing Lin, Yimin Chen, Armando Casillas, Jin Wen, Zhelun Chen, Piljae Im, Sen Huang, and Jiazhen Ling."A labeled dataset for building HVAC systems operating in faulted and fault-free states."Scientific Data 10 (2023). DOI

Chen, Zhelun, Zheng O'Neill, Jin Wen, Ojas Pradhan, Tao Yang, Xing Lu, Guanjing Lin, Shohei Miyata, Seungjae Lee, Chou Shen, Roberto Chiosa, Marco Savino Piscitelli, Alfonso Capozzoli, Franz Hengel, Alexander Kuhrer, Marco Pritoni, Wei Liu, John Claub, Yimin Chen, and Terry Herr."A review of data-driven fault detection and diagnostics for building HVAC systems."Applied Energy Vol.339 No..121030 (2023). DOI

Walker, Iain S, Nuria Casquero-Modrego, and Brennan Less."Challenges and Opportunities for Home Decarbonization." (2023).

Regnier, Cynthia, Luis L Fernandes, Kaiyu Sun, Pia Engel-Moss, Tom Abram, Luke McGuire, and Ruju Rathod."Integrated Whole-Building Zero Net Energy Retrofits for Small Commercial Offices." (2023).