CORK, Ireland — Johnson Controls and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) announced the release of the Building Efficiency Targeting Tool for Energy Retrofits (BETTER) to the public. The tool allows building owners and managers to rapidly convert readily available monthly building energy consumption data into specific recommendations for improvement. This analysis can be performed without the need for on-site audits or inspections, allowing many currently unemployed energy efficiency workers to continue to plan and develop building retrofit and commissioning projects.

"Over 400,000 energy efficiency workers in the U.S. are currently unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic because they can't get into buildings to do energy audits," said Clay Nesler, vice president of global sustainability and regulatory affairs, Johnson Controls. "This tool can help the efficiency industry get a jump start of identifying and developing projects that show the greatest opportunities for cost effective savings."

"We are pleased to partner with Johnson Controls to introduce BETTER and advance the science of data-driven, remote, and low-cost building energy analysis to improve building energy efficiency at speed and scale worldwide," said Nan Zhou, staff scientist and head of the International Energy Analysis Department of the Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts Division at Berkeley Lab.

"BETTER has helped our school division identify substantial energy cost savings, which can be redirected into the classroom,” said Bryan Conrad, energy education coordinator for Prince William County Public Schools. “With its simple data inputs and powerful analytics, we believe BETTER is poised to help hundreds of school districts across the country to improve their energy, financial, and environmental performance."

"Building Efficiency Accelerator partner cities are using BETTER to assist local governments, building owners, and energy service companies to target the best opportunities for improving public and private building energy efficiency," said Jennifer Layke, global energy director, World Resources Institute. 

The tool will be previewed during a public webinar on July 15, 2020. 

Want more HVAC industry news and information? Join The NEWS on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn today!