New federal dataset and $67M in BTO funding reshape how operators plan for building energy demand
The DOE's Building Technologies Office (BTO) is reshaping building energy demand planning by deploying over $67 million in R&D funding for 2024. Additionally, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have released a comprehensive county-level energy demand dataset extending through 2050. This initiative aims to enhance the strategies of operators in anticipating and handling future energy needs.
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Key facts, context, and what it means, in one minute.
Key takeaways
Lawrence Berkeley and NREL have released a new county-level energy demand dataset through 2050.
$67 million in funding has been deployed by the DOE's BTO for 2024 R&D.
The initiative aims to help operators plan better for future building energy demands.
A retrofit approach tested in a 184-unit multifamily building cut up-front electrification costs by 33% to 54% compared to standard methods. That single figure, published by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of its 2024 Building Technologies Office recap, illustrates the scale of the operational opportunity now in front of energy and facilities teams managing large real estate portfolios.
More than $67 million in BTO funding deployed in 2024
The DOE's Building Technologies Office directed its 2024 investments across five major programs. The largest was the Building Energy Efficiency Frontiers and Innovation Technologies program, known as BENEFIT, which committed $38.8 million across 25 projects in 17 states. According to the Department of Energy, the combined BENEFIT cohorts from 2022, 2023, and 2024 carry a potential $40 billion in annual energy cost savings, assuming at least one project per technology area reaches mass adoption.
The BENEFIT focus areas span next-generation building envelope systems, lighting, and HVAC, the three end uses that consistently dominate commercial and multifamily energy spend. For procurement and facilities directors evaluating which technologies to pilot, the 25-project portfolio represents a useful forward indicator of what will be commercially available in the next three to five years.
BTO also pushed $6.5 million through its Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, funding 18 projects across 13 states in two separate award rounds, per the Department of Energy. An additional $2.4 million funded the Equitable and Affordable Solutions to Electrification prize, where the multifamily retrofit benchmark emerged. The Buildings Upgrade Prize, at $22 million, rounded out the major allocations, with 45 winners across 32 states selected in Phase 1 alone.
A new dataset gives planners county-level demand visibility through 2050
On the planning side, researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Laboratory of the Rockies published the Buildings Sector Scenarios dataset in Nature this year. The dataset, funded by BTO, provides hourly electricity demand projections at the county level across the entire contiguous United States through 2050, segmented by sector and end use. Non-electric fuel projections are also included at the state and annual level.
The paper's authors, led by Jared Langevin of Lawrence Berkeley's Building and Industrial Energy Systems Division, describe the dataset as a response to high uncertainty in U.S. energy load growth, its effects on generation mix, and the downstream impact on customer costs. The dataset is designed to be customizable, letting utilities, grid operators, and large commercial energy buyers build their own scenarios rather than relying on a single forecast.
For grid-connected facility operators, the practical value is in the hourly county-level resolution. That granularity supports site-specific analysis of peak demand exposure, a direct input to demand charge management strategies and onsite storage sizing decisions. The researchers validated the dataset against historical surveys and existing projected estimates of buildings sector demand, according to Nature.
What the data and funding pipeline mean for operators today
The convergence of active federal R&D investment and a new public planning dataset shifts the operational calculus for energy and facilities teams. BENEFIT-funded technologies entering commercialization over the next several years will arrive in a market where utilities and grid planners are already using county-level scenario data. Operators who align their retrofit and electrification roadmaps with those same datasets will be better positioned in utility incentive programs and rate negotiations.
The multifamily cost benchmark from the EAS-E prize is worth examining directly. A 33% to 54% reduction in up-front retrofit costs, demonstrated in a real 184-unit building and published by the Department of Energy, gives portfolio managers a credible reference point when building business cases for building-wide electrification. Most financial models for electrification retrofits have used rough estimates; this benchmark is based on an actual demonstrated approach.
The Buildings Sector Scenarios dataset is publicly accessible and reproducible, per Nature, meaning operations teams with analytical capacity can run custom projections for their specific geographies and building types without waiting on utility-provided forecasts. Lawrence Berkeley and the National Laboratory of the Rockies also documented the full analysis workflow, which lowers the barrier for in-house energy analysts to adapt the tool.
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