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.
- Presentations
News
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.

Publications

Publications By Research Area

2025

Pereira, Flavia deAndrade, Kyriakos Katsigarakis, Dimitrios Rovas, Marco Pritoni, Conor Shaw, Lazlo Paul, Anand Prakash, Susana Martin-Toral, Donal Finn, and James O’Donnell."A semantics-driven framework to enable demand flexibility control applications in real buildings."Advanced Engineering Informatics 64 (2025) 103049. DOI

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

Levinson, Ronnen M, Donghan Kim, Howdy Goudey, Sharon S Chen, Hui Zhang, Ali Ghahramani, Charlie Huizenga, yingdong He, Akihisa Nomoto, Alexander Merritt, Edward A Arens, Ana Alvarez Suarez, David Ritter, Markus Tarin, and Robert Prickett."Hot, Cold, or Just Right? An Infrared Biometric Sensor to Improve Occupant Comfort and Reduce Overcooling in Buildings via Closed-loop Control." (2025).

Szum, Carolyn, Mohamed Firas Jemal, Ezzedine Khalfallah, and Stephane de la Rue du Can."Clean Energy Revolving Loan Funds: International Experience." (2025).

Office, U.S Department of Energy Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization, Heidi Fuchs, Unique Karki, Tae-Hwan Lim, Peng Peng, Prakash Rao, Arman Shehabi, and Jibran Zuberi."Transformative Pathways for U.S. Industry: Unlocking American Innovation." (2025). DOI

Lee, Sang Hoon, and Evan Savage."E2C Expert Match Technical Assistance Adams County, Colorado." (2025).

Lee, Sang Hoon, and Melake Getabecha."E2C Expert Match Technical Assistance: El Centro, California." (2025).

Paul, Lazlo, Flavia De Andrade Pereira, Anand Prakash, Sang woo Ham, Jingjuan Feng, Rich Brown, and Marco Pritoni."Open building operating system: a grid-responsive semantics-driven control platform for buildings."Science and Technology for the Built Environment 31.3 (2025) 294-311. DOI

Zheng, Wanfu, Laura Zabala, Jesus Febres, David Blum, and Zhe Wang."Quantifying and simulating the weather forecast uncertainty for advanced building control."Journal of Building Performance Simulation (2025) 1-16. DOI

Rao, Prakash, Thomas P Hendrickson, Elizabeth Wachs, Shubhankar Upasani, and Alberta Carpenter."Testing a method for developing facility-level greenhouse gas emissions intensities of U.S. traded goods." (2025).

2024

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

Chiosa, Roberto, Marco Savino Piscitelli, Marco Pritoni, and Alfonso Capozzoli."A portable application framework for energy management and information systems (EMIS) solutions using Brick semantic schema."Energy and Buildings 323 (2024) 114802. DOI

Belaid, Youba Nait, Miguel Heleno, and Kristina Hamachi LaCommare."Reconductoring Economic and Financial Analysis (REFA) Tool." (2024).

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

Paul, Lazlo, Marco Pritoni, Cynthia Regnier, Jason S MacDonald, Richard E Brown, and Cecilia Johnson."Architecting the Future: Exploring Coordinated Control Frameworks for Connected Communities."ACEEE Summer Study (2024).

Casillas, Armando, Thomas Defauw, Sang woo Ham, Dre Helmns, Lazlo Paul, Anand Prakash, Weiping Huang, Peter Grant, and Marco Pritoni."Demystifying Thermal Energy Storage Integrated Heat Pump Systems: Development of Generalized Sizing and Control Algorithms for Demand Flexibility."ACEEE Summer Study (2024).

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).

Casillas, Armando, Jessica Granderson, Yimin Chen, John House, Guanjing Lin, Weiping Huang, Guhan Velmurugan, and Marco Pritoni."Innovating the next generation of commercial smart building software."ACEEE Summer Study (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

Ham, Sang woo, Lazlo Paul, Armando Casillas, Anand Prakash, Donghun Kim, Richard E Brown, Marco Pritoni, and Peter Grant."Practical challenges of model predictive control (MPC) for grid interactive small and medium commercial buildings."ACEEE Summer Study (2024).