Lead Performers: 
-- National Renewable Energy Laboratory - Golden, CO
-- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Berkeley, CA
Project Term: October 2014 to July 2015

Project Background

The development of new higher performing materials for buildings and building systems will be a key element of making the high-efficiency, high-performing buildings of the future. The application of new technologies to produce high performing building materials—better refrigerants, improved heat exchange, more effective insulation, and materials with dynamic performance properties that are durable, strong and cost-effective—will be one way that the buildings of the future will be more advanced than buildings today.

A promising approach to discover and apply new materials is through what’s termed the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), which includes both computational approaches based on high-performance computing, and high-throughput experiments based on combinatorial approaches.  The goal of MGI is “to cut in half the current time and cost of bringing new materials from the laboratory to the marketplace” [White, A., 2012, “The Materials Genome Initiative: One Year On,” MRS Bulletin 37, pp. 715-716]. The scope of R&D opportunities for MGI in the buildings environment, however, remains unclear.

Project Objective

NREL and LBNL will lead a scoping study of MGI for buildings energy efficiency which addresses (at a minimum) the following questions:

1. What is the status of MGI (computational and experimental) related to building materials?
2. What are the most severe materials limitations in buildings, including solids and fluids? (i.e. If “ideal” materials could be applied, what potential energy savings may result?)
3. How can MGI contribute to improving building energy efficiency by addressing these materials limitations?

NREL and LBNL will address the aforementioned questions through a combination of market and techno-economic analysis as well as through an information gathering workshop.   This workshop will gather experts from across all of the BTO relevant labs as well as universities and industry partners in materials and building science including NREL partners identified earlier who are key leaders in the MGI space. After the workshop a study report will be written detailing the findings of the review and analysis and will be submitted to BTO and academic peer-review for publication.

Contacts

DOE Technology Manager: Karma Sawyer
Lead Performers: Robert Tenent (NREL) and Robert Van Buskirk (LBNL)