On July 12, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $90 million in competitive awards to help states, cities, tribes, and partnering organizations implement updated energy codes for buildings. Funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, these awards will support 27 projects across 26 states and the District of Columbia to ensure buildings meet the latest standards for energy efficiency — reducing greenhouse gas emissions and lowering energy bills for American families and businesses. Awardees will provide technical assistance for updating state and local building codes, as well as their successful implementation across the country.

The 27 awarded projects were selected following a robust stakeholder engagement process and target partnerships across the range of energy code stakeholders who play an important role supporting the successful implementation of building codes. These awards encompass a number of key activities supporting energy code updates and implementation, including workforce development, community engagement, research and data collection, energy, equity and environmental justice, and increased support for compliance and enforcement.

The selected projects are as follows:

• Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (Anchorage, Alaska) will engage local communities to support the development, adoption, and implementation of energy codes that are responsive to the unique characteristics and needs of those communities, and improve resilience, sustainability, and safety. (Award amount: $1.5 million)
• American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (Washington, D.C.) will establish a National Energy Codes Collaborative, which is a nationwide capacity-building network that empowers states and jurisdictions to effectively implement updated cost-effective building energy codes through technical assistance, community engagement, focused local strategy development, and peer-to-peer collaboration and convenings. (Award amount: $9.6 million)
• ASHRAE (Peachtree Corners, Georgia) will develop and deploy education and training resources targeted to energy code officials in this nationwide multi-year project. (Award amount: $2.9 million)
• California Energy Commission (Sacramento, California) will engage with key jurisdictional partners to expand the use of its digital infrastructure toward supporting energy code compliance and implementation in the State of California. (Award amount: $2.3 million)
• Center for Energy and Environment (Minneapolis, Minnesota) will provide technical resources to support stretch code adoption efforts and conduct code compliance activities through outreach, trainings, and tool development in jurisdictions throughout the state. (Award amount: $5.3 million)
• City of Fort Collins (Fort Collins, Colorado) will engage stakeholders to establish energy use and carbon reduction targets, develop new stretch code language, and provide implementation assistance and workforce training programs to support the city’s clean energy goals. (Award amount: $0.7 million)
• Clean Energy Group Inc. (Montpelier, Vermont) will establish and advance the implementation of a Climate Resilient Energy code, which is a stretch code to improve resilience and health outcomes in affordable multifamily housing with a focus on disadvantaged communities. (Award amount: $1 million)
• ClearlyEnergy Inc. (Severna Park, Maryland) will create regional cohorts to implement building performance standards and energy-efficiency programs at a regional level in small, rural, and Justice40 communities, offering opportunities to standardize policy models among adjacent jurisdictions and promote their consistency. (Award amount: $2.9 million)
• Colorado Energy Office (Denver, Colorado) will develop a robust strategy to engage local jurisdictions and help advance and expand the equitable implementation of building performance standards across the state. (Award amount: $2.5 million)
• Colorado Energy Office (Denver, Colorado) will develop and deploy resources to support the adoption and implementation of energy codes at the local level, including direct technical assistance, training to grow the construction and code inspection workforce, and innovative compliance tools such as remote and/or virtual inspections in the state. (Award amount: $2.5 million)
• Earth Advantage (Portland, Oregon) seeks to advance building performance standards to equitably reduce energy use, lower customer energy bills, avoid costly investment in new generation capacity, and reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions throughout the State of Oregon. (Award amount: $2.8 million)
• Elevate Energy (Chicago, Illinois) will develop a resource hub to provide a suite of services for building professionals, contractors, and building owners to support compliance with advanced energy codes and building policies such as decarbonization, benchmarking, and building performance standards throughout the State of Illinois. (Award amount: $4.5 million)
• Energy Futures Group (Hinesburg, Vermont) will develop an energy code administration program for the State of Vermont to improve the effective implementation of energy codes in the state. (Award amount: $1 million)
• Institute for Market Transformation (Washington, D.C.) will support a cohort of jurisdictions through a community-led process to design and implement building performance standards and supporting policies that focus on decarbonizing existing buildings. (Award amount: $5 million)
• International Code Council (Washington, D.C.) will develop a digitization roadmap to support small and under-resourced jurisdictions in their transition to electronic code enforcement processes. (Award amount: $2.6 million)
• Karpman Consulting, LLC (Marlborough, Connecticut) will incorporate a standardized framework (ASHRAE Standard 229P) and enhanced data exchange capabilities into commonly used building energy modeling and compliance software tools, resulting in increased modeling accuracy, improved compliance, and stronger code enforcement. (Award amount: $2.1 million)
• Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (Boston, Massachusetts) will engage local communities and provide field-based trainings and inspections, support flexible compliance approaches, and enable the sharing of regional best practices to advance the equitable adoption and implementation of updated stretch building energy codes throughout the state. (Award amount: $3.9 million)
• Metropolitan Energy Center (Kansas City, Missouri) will leverage its extensive and diverse multistate network of 30 regional, state, and local community partners – including those typically not engaged in energy code efforts – to conduct outreach and expand the energy code workforce in rural and disadvantaged communities across Kansas and Missouri. (Award amount: $6.8 million)
• New Buildings Institute (Portland, Oregon) will help develop, adopt, and implement the District of Columbia’s 2026 net-zero energy code, including engagement with community-based organizations and alignment with the District’s Building Energy Performance Standard. (Award amount: $1 million)
• New Buildings Institute (Portland, Oregon) will leverage the Resilient Southwest Building Code Collaborative – a collective effort that includes local jurisdictions, state agencies, researchers, educational and training organizations, industry and technical partners, and community-based organizations – to advance highly efficient and resilient construction practices that address affordability and regional characteristics. (Award amount: $3.5 million)
• Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (Norristown, Massachusetts) will utilize U.S. DOE’s existing field study methodologies to complete three energy code field studies of single-family and multifamily residential, commercial, and mixed-use buildings in the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware. (Award amount: $2 million)
• Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) will develop energy code and building science training programs at career and technical high schools, as well as community colleges across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to provide new opportunities to enter the energy code workforce, helping to address the code inspection and skilled-trades employment gaps. (Award amount: $3 million)
• Slipstream Group Inc. (Madison, Wisconsin) will support municipalities throughout the State of Wisconsin by providing technical assistance for residential and commercial energy code adoption, conducting a compliance study, convening a code compliance collaborative, and providing training and other critical energy codes support. (Award amount: $4 million)
• Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (Atlanta, Georgia) plans to develop and deploy replicable and equitable energy code compliance studies for both single-family and multifamily residential homes in Georgia, which expand on existing DOE field study methodologies. (Award amount: $1.4 million)
• Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (Atlanta, Georgia) will develop and deliver accessible and replicable energy code resources, technical assistance, training, and workforce development strategies to stakeholders in the State of Louisiana, which will increase workforce knowledge and expertise to effectively implement the state’s recent energy code update. (Award amount: $1.6 million)
• Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (Atlanta, Georgia) will evaluate the impact of property disinvestment on the cost and feasibility of building performance standards implementation in commercial buildings and use the findings to develop a toolkit with policy and program recommendations for developing equitable existing building policies. (Award amount: $1.7 million)
• University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio) will develop a new, cost-optimal methodology to support the design and implementation of equitable building performance standard in Ohio’s large cities. (Award amount: $2.9 million)

For more information on DOE’s activities supporting building codes, visit the Building Energy Codes Program or see the full funding opportunity announcement.

Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time.