The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Energy Efficiency portfolio focuses on improving the energy afford­ability, productivity, and resilience of homes and buildings, and strengthening U.S. manufacturing competitiveness. EERE provides tools, resources, and more on saving energy in homes, buildings, and manufacturing to help state and local governments implement cost-effective energy efficiency technologies that provide the same energy requirements and services as current technologies—but with less energy demand.

Energy-Saving Homes

  • Home Energy Score is a national standardized tool for assessing the physical and structural energy efficiency of multifamily residential buildings. State and local governments can use it to collect building energy-related metrics to inform local energy goals and milestones, demonstrate sustainability leadership, and guide energy-related investments.
  • Weatherization Assistance Program provides grants to states and territories to improve the energy efficiency of the homes of low-income families.
  • Guidelines for Home Energy Professionals project is a resource for states who may be setting policies, regulations, or interested in enhancing the skilled and credential workforce in the residential energy upgrade industry.

Buildings

  • Standard Energy Efficiency Data Platform allows cities and states to streamline the complex and difficult process of managing and standardizing disparate building energy data. Users can combine, manage, clean, store, compare, and share data from multiple sources about a large group of buildings using this free open source database. 
  • The Building Technologies Office works with states and local governments to develop innovative cost-effective energy saving solutions for public and commercial buildings.
  • Building Performance Database is the largest publicly available dataset of anonymized information that state and local governments can use to identify high- or low-performing buildings and efficiency measures with the greatest savings potential, analyze the range of likely returns from an investment, evaluate and compare efficiency project performance, and enable public access to general statistical information without sharing building-level information.  
  • Energy Asset Score is a national standardized tool for assessing the physical and structural energy efficiency of commercial and multifamily residential buildings.  State and local governments can use it to strengthen government transparency by reporting building energy information to citizens and collecting building energy-related metrics to inform local energy goals and milestones, demonstrate sustainability leadership, and guide energy-related investments.
  • BuildingSync is a common diagram for data collected during energy audits that uses a standard data file format so the data can be reused throughout a project’s life.  State and local governments can use it for energy audits to receive standardized data along with reports that make standardized data more readily available to identify cost-effective opportunities across a portfolio of buildings, and easily improve record-keeping, and streamline subsequent audits of the same or similar facilities.
  • eProject Builder is a free and secure Web-based resource for tracking energy savings performance contract (ESPC) projects. It provides standardized and ready access to data, enabling state and local governments to reduce ESPC transaction costs and get the most value out of their data over the short and long term.​

Manufacturing

  • Industrial Assessment Centers located at 24 of the nation’s top engineering schools provide no-cost technical assistance to small- and medium-sized manufacturers and municipal waste and water utilities by helping them identify ways to reduce energy and water use and increase productivity.
  • The Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) provides resources to help organizations using industrial-scale energy, such as municipal waste and water utilities, save energy and reduce climate and environmental impacts. AMO also works with academic institutions and industry to enhance workforce development.
  • Combined Heat and Power Technical Assistance offers market opportunity analysis and engineering support to institutional, commercial, and multifamily industrial end-users considering or installing combined heat and power, waste heat to power, and district energy technologies.