Photo of a row of houses on a street.

The Building Technologies Office (BTO) collaborates with home builders, energy professionals, state and local governments, utilities, product manufacturers, educators, and researchers to improve the energy efficiency of both new and existing homes. BTO’s residential programs include research, analysis, information, and partnerships geared toward developing and scaling energy-efficiency technologies and approaches that improve the affordability and comfort of our nation’s 120 million residential buildings, while reducing their carbon footprint and energy consumption.

Learn more about the RBI team and key residential programs in the links below. 

Research/Field Validation

Advanced Building Construction Initiative
The ABC Initiative integrates energy-efficiency solutions into highly productive U.S. construction practices for new buildings and retrofits.
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Building America
Building America has been a source of innovations in residential building energy performance, quality, affordability, and comfort for over 15 years.
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Tools & Information

Building America Solution Center
The Building America Solution Center provides access to expert information on hundreds of high-performance construction topics.
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U.S. Residential Building Stock Decarbonization Analysis
A variety of analysis to investigate costs, benefits, and environmental impacts of options to decarbonize residential buildings.
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Partnerships

Advanced Building Construction Collaborative
The ABC Initiative integrates energy-efficiency solutions into highly productive U.S. construction practices for new buildings and retrofits.
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Green Building Workforce Development
Ensuring training pathways for a diverse and qualified building efficiency workforce that enables high-performance buildings.
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Home Performance with ENERGY STAR®
Connecting homeowners with experienced contractors to help them understand their home energy use and identify improvements that increase performance.
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Zero Energy Design Designation Program
ZEDD recognizes post-secondary institutions that prepare students for 21st century building careers.
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Buildings Upgrade Prize (Buildings UP)
Learn about the Buildings Upgrade Prize designed to help U.S. buildings transition to be more energy-efficient and clean energy-ready.
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Home Energy Score
The Home Energy Score™ provides homeowners, buyers, and renters directly comparable and credible information about a home’s energy use.
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Solar Decathlon
Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition of 10 contests that challenge student teams to design and build full-size, solar-powered houses.
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Zero Energy Ready Home Program
DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes: The Home of the Future Today!
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Information

Better Building Residential Program Solution Center
Explore this repository for lessons learned, resources, and knowledge from program administrators and industry experts across the country.
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Better Buildings Residential Network
BBRN connects energy-efficiency programs and partners to learn from one another to increase the number of homes that are energy efficient.
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Home Improvement Expert
Quality installation checklists for homeowners and contractors help ensure maximum benefits from 20+ common home energy upgrades.
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ResStock
Open-source platform for national, regional and community scale housing stock energy efficiency analysis.
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Better Buildings Residential Energy Efficiency Guide for Local Governments
Resources to help local governments implement policies and programs to improve the energy efficiency of single-family and multifamily homes.
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Manufactured Housing Resources
Resources for consumers and lenders to select and finance energy-efficient manufactured homes
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