“We’re really looking at leveraging technology to achieve sustainability goals by looking at what’s out there in terms of emerging technologies that can help us achieve the energy, water and greenhouse-gas emissions goals that we’ve set out to accomplish,” Reed notes.
According to its website, the GPG program supports the evaluation of technologies in the pre- or early-commercial stages of development in an effort to facilitate and accelerate the transition between bench-scale technology and commercial viability.
Reed says the GPG program follows a four-step process, the first of which is to identify and select the technologies to evaluate. Those that are selected are piloted in one or more buildings within GSA’s portfolio, and the measurement and verification assessments of the technologies at the test sites are conducted in conjunction with the Washington-based U.S. Department of Energy’s national labs. Finally, GPG’s findings are published in reports that are made publicly available on its website and can be used to
inform decision-making on the implementation of the new technologies.
What makes the program especially valuable is its impact on the private sector.
“In general, the commercial sector can be reluctant to adopt new technologies because it’s not easy to take the risk to be the new entity to test an unproven technology or something that’s new with an uncertain outcome,” Reed explains. “We feel like the program really helps to overcome some of these barriers by [GSA] being that first test case and by issuing reports that provide detailed and technical information on the value and the functionality of these new technologies.”
To date, GPG has issued 24 reports across a number of building categories, including energy management, lighting, building envelope, HVAC, onsite power and renewables, and water. Reed notes participation in the program by manufacturers does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the government.
The Innovation Incubator
Similarly, a public-private sector partnership between the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, Colo., and San Francisco-based Wells Fargo was launched last year to foster the development of early-stage clean technologies for commercial buildings. The Innovation Incubator (IN2) program, a $10 million environmental grant funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation, is designed to help technology start-ups overcome market barriers—financing, in particular—that prevent new energy innovations from crossing the early-stage laboratory research phase to full-scale market production.
“We want to have this kind of incubator process … where these really early-stage companies come in and they’re able to quickly incubate and see if their technology is able to go mainstream or if it’s a failure or if it needs to have some adaptations or what have you,” explains Holley Henderson, LEED fellow, founder of H2 Ecodesign, Atlanta. Henderson is an IN2 program advisory board member.