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About BETTER

The Building Efficiency Targeting Tool for Energy Retrofits (BETTER) is a software toolkit that enables building operators to quickly and easily identify the most cost-saving energy efficiency measures in buildings and portfolios using readily available building and energy data. With minimal data entry, BETTER benchmarks a building’s or portfolio’s energy use against peers; quantifies energy, cost, and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction potential; and recommends energy efficiency measures (technological and operational) for individual buildings or portfolios, targeting specific energy savings levels. The toolkit consists of a web application, application programming interface (API), and analytical engine source code. The web application and API are currently free to use by early adopters subject to the terms below. The analytical engine source code is available on GitHub and can be adopted, redeveloped, and redistributed freely under an open-source license, allowing users to incorporate BETTER’s analytical capabilities into their own software platforms and tools.

BETTER Handout
Portfolio Case Study
Building Case Study
Nonprofit Case Study

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Value to Users

BETTER provides users with visibility into the energy performance of buildings and portfolios (without expensive site visits and complex modeling) to help identify immediate, cost-saving energy efficiency improvements and to focus further audits and studies. The tool analyzes a building’s energy use in response weather conditions to generate potential savings and customized efficiency recommendations at the building and portfolio levels. The savings are presented in terms of energy, cost, and GHG emission reductions so that users can see the potential impact of efficiency improvements on the power grid, their finances, and the environment. BETTER’s fully-automated approach also allows users to compare a building’s performance against either a built-in reference dataset or their own building portfolio, enabling large portfolio operators to target buildings with the highest savings potential first.

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Testimonials

  • “I'm convinced that BETTER is an important evolutionary step for the U.S. Department of Energy and the broader market.” — Chris Pyke, Senior Vice President, Product, Arc Skoru, Inc.
  • "BETTER has helped our school division identify substantial energy cost savings, which can be redirected into the classroom. 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." — Bryan Conrad, Energy Education Coordinator for Prince William County Public Schools
  • “The ability of the tool to go beyond benchmarking by offering energy efficiency measure recommendations is extremely valuable, particularly at times when on-site assessments are either not practical or feasible.” — Eric Noller, Principal, Energy Resources Integration LLC
  • “BETTER offers a possibility of delivering efficiency retrofits in underserved markets faster and cheaper by orders of magnitude.” — Tom Strumolo, Founder, Energy General LLC
  • “PowerOptions is a non-profit energy consortium that has been using the BETTER tool since January of 2023 as a virtual energy efficiency audit for our members’ Building Decarbonization Roadmaps. We’ve analyzed over fifty buildings across a dozen portfolios, and found that BETTER is an intuitive, easy-to-use tool with a very responsive and helpful support staff. For the building use types available in the tool, we have found the results to be about 90% accurate. We are grateful to have this free tool available to us, to streamline sustainability planning for our non-profit members!” — Erin Camp, PhD, Energy Sustainability and Analytics Program Manager, PowerOptions, Inc.