Technology adoption strategy for the Existing Buildings Efficiency Research Program

This study was conducted for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Existing Buildings Efficiency Research Program (EBER) which is implemented for the US Department of Energy's Office of Buildings and Community Systems. The purpose of the study is to characterize the building energy retrofit service industry, describe the technology adoption process within this industry, identify paths through which retrofit technologies can be adopted, and develop a technology adoption strategy to support the EBER Program. This study builds on past research in the technology transfer area and attempts to tailor a technology transfer strategy for the EBER Program while focusing on the retrofit services industry. The retrofit services industry can be defined as the businesses that constitute the path from building retrofit inception to the completion of the project. To accomplish the goals of this study, a three-phased methodology was used. The three phases consisted of (1) background analysis and segmentation of the retrofit industry structure; (2) interviews of building retrofit service industry association members; and (3) conducting an actual building energy retrofit service industry practitioners' workshop for direct information input. 6 refs., 16 figs.