The CUNY Institute for Urban Systems Building Performance Lab was established in 2006 to improve the energy efficiency and performance of public and commercial buildings through research and training. PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION: For more than a decade, BPL has been at the forefront of workforce training in the energy efficiency and energy management fields, and our training programs are designed to meet the needs of workers in a variety of industries including facilities and real estate management, building operations and maintenance, and energy services and consulting. Currently, we are partnering with the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, the Department of Small Business Services, and CUNY SPS to offer BUILDING OPERATOR TRAINING, a no-cost energy-focused training to operators of small- to mid-size apartment buildings. To learn more and register for a class, visit: http://www.cunybpl.org/training/ RESEARCH: BPL’s goal for research is to address knowledge gaps in the high-performance building market. Recently, our focus has been on Building Automation Systems, a type of distributed control system that allows for unprecedented functionality in the management of a building. To that end, we’ve partnered with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on an ambitious project to train operators and Building Operator Certification instructors in PNNL’s Building Re-Tuning (BRT) protocol. BRT can help an operator reduce a building’s energy use by up to 25%. In fall 2012, we launched the Energy Data Lab under sponsorship by the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services Energy Management division (DEM), with the goal of demonstrating how students of the City’s public university could play a useful role in the City’s energy management efforts.
