Decarbonizing Homes

Berkeley Lab has been gathering cost data and using industry surveys to figure out the best approaches for reducing carbon emissions from homes. We are developing standardized cost data collection and database management approaches for future program planning and management purposes. This work is studying financing, business practices, and program optimization, as well as investigating new technologies, such as low power heat pumps, thermal storage and smart electric panels. We are using machine-learning methods to develop archetypal retrofit packages that optimize carbon reductions and costs.

Deep Energy Retrofits for Homes
There is vast, untapped energy savings potential in existing U.S. homes. With support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is conducting a research study to better understand the costs and challenges associated with deep energy retrofit (DER) projects that aim to reduce energy use and carbon emissions by 50% or more. These projects can improve home comfort and occupant health, and upgrade our housing stock for the next hundred years.
Market adoption of deep energy retrofits (DER) has been limited. Major limiting factors include complex projects, high costs, perceived risks, extensive disruption, and unfamiliar work scopes to some contractors. In our work, we are looking at ways to address these barriers through industry surveys and gathering home performance data from large numbers of home energy upgrade projects. So far, we have a database of more than 1,700 homes.
Map of project locations for deep retrofit study including summary statistics for the whole dataset.