Buildings

Cutting Building Energy Use by a Third, One Neighborhood at a Time

Daniel Morton — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:29:56 +0000

Cutting Building Energy Use by a Third, One Neighborhood at a Time Daniel Morton Sun, 06/28/2026 - 12:29

Daniel Morton

What if the buildings in a neighborhood could share their heat the way a carpool shares a ride, essentially dropping off what one doesn't need right where another can use it?

That's the idea behind a Thermal Microgrid, and it's the subject of a recent paper that has won the ASHRAE Best Paper Award at the 2026 Annual Conference. The paper, "From Theory to Practice: Feasibility Study of a Thermal Microgrid at a US DoD Installation," was led by RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze in collaboration with researchers at the National Laboratory of the Rockies and the US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory. It was presented at the ASHRAE Annual Meeting in Atlanta in September 2025.

How it works

A Thermal Microgrid is, at its core, a network of pipes carrying water at near-ambient temperature between buildings. Instead of every building running its own heating and cooling systems in isolation, each connected building gets a compact, efficient water-source heat pump in place of conventional HVAC equipment. A building that needs to shed heat, such as like a gym, a data center, or a kitchen, can pass that heat directly to a neighboring building that needs it, rather than rejecting it to the outside air and then burning more energy somewhere else to make heat from scratch.

The result, according to the study: a 31% reduction in source energy use, roughly a third less energy consumed to heat and cool the same set of buildings.

Why a military base, and why it matters beyond one

The study specifically models feasibility at a US Department of Defense installation. Military bases are effectively self-contained microgrids already, with their own generation, distribution, and a mandate for energy resilience and security that goes beyond simple cost savings. Demonstrating a Thermal Microgrid on a base means proving it somewhere the stakes for reliability are highest, and where the case for reducing energy demand ties directly to operational security, not just utility bills.

The implications reach well past DoD. The same logic applies to any dense cluster of buildings with mismatched heating and cooling needs, such as university campuses, hospital complexes, and commercial building districts.

The data center connection

A current application of this concept is with data centers, which are drawing an increasing share of national attention, and national grid capacity, for their energy demand. Data centers generate enormous, near-constant waste heat as a byproduct of computing. Rather than treating that heat purely as a cooling problem to be discarded, a Thermal Microgrid offers a way to treat it as a resource: piping it to nearby buildings that need warmth, and cutting the total energy draw of the district as a whole. As data center construction increases, pairing new facilities with thermal-sharing infrastructure could turn one of the grid's fastest-growing loads into a source of heating for its neighbors.

Why now?

This year's record-breaking summer temperatures have pushed cooling demand, and grid strain, to new highs in many parts of the country. A 31% reduction in source energy use at the building-district scale is exactly the kind of solution that eases pressure on the grid during peak demand, while lowering costs for the buildings involved.

Congratulations to the whole team on this recognition!

JUNE 2026

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ISO/TC 160 Conference

Daniel Morton — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 23:18:55 +0000

ISO/TC 160 Conference Daniel Morton Tue, 06/16/2026 - 17:18

RASEI hosts the ISO/TC 160 Conference, helping to define how we build more efficient and more affordable buildings.

In June of 2026, RASEI hosted a meeting of the ISO/TC 160 Glass in Building Working Group.

The International Organization of Standardization (ISO) is the world’s leading developer of voluntary international standards. While the idea of meetings focused on defining standards sounds a bit dry, these working groups are essential in building international agreement on how we do every from manufacturing to healthcare. These working groups bring together experts from across industry, academia, and government agencies to establish consensus-based standards that help to promote quality, safety, reliability, durability, interoperability, and innovation across industries.

RASEI Fellow Rob Tenent was a lead participant in this working group and a co-organizer. For a forward looking research based organization the innovation component of these discussions is of particular significance. The introduction of new ideas into these discussions is a key way in which new technologies can start to be incorporated into the mainstream of how we build, a mechanism for developing more energy efficient and more affordable buildings.

Founded in 1947, ISO has published more than 25,000 international standards covering fields ranging from manufacturing and healthcare to information technology, energy, and constructions. The standards developed by the ISO groups include participants from more than 170 countries.

In many sectors ISO standards are used as a trusted common language that enable organizations from different countries to work together effectively.

The Glass in Building Working group, or ISO/TC 160, which was established in 1974 is tasked with developing international standards governing the performance, testing, reliability, and application of glass products for use in buildings. The work of this committee impacts virtually all aspects of modern architectural glass, such as safety glass, laminated glass, insulating glass, and energy efficient glazing. This group provides the technical foundation that allows companies to be consistent and up to code across the globe. These standards help to ensure that glass products manufactured in one country can be confidently used in projects around the globe.

As new challenges emerge for how we build more resilient and affordable buildings, this committees work and focus will become increasingly important. When buildings need to be more energy efficient, be resilient to extreme weather events, take advantage of advances in materials science, all of these factors are discussed and deliberated on by this team, before these innovations are built into the evolving standards.

You can find out more about the Glass in Building team here, and you can learn more about how the standards are developed to tackle global challenges here.

JUNE 2026

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Possible Solutions for Sustainable Data Centers

Daniel Morton — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:20:07 +0000

Possible Solutions for Sustainable Data Centers Daniel Morton Wed, 04/22/2026 - 09:20

Original Article

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A recent article published in The Conversation challenges some of the widespread assumptions around data centers. Instead of data centers being an inevitable drain on the communities that host them, with careful design, there are opportunities for more sustainable, and possibly positive, outcomes of hosting a data center. Written by two RASEI Fellows, Gregor Henze and Sean Shaheen, the article argues that with thoughtful design and operation, data centers can actually become local energy assets, providing resilience during outages, and even heating local homes.

The authors, Gregor Henze (Professor of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering) and Sean Shaheen (Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering), draw directly on some of their own research areas to build this case. Their work explores aspects of how data centers could be more sustainably integrated into local energy systems in ways that benefit surrounding neighborhoods. It also explores some future directions that are built on developing new, more energy efficient, computational methods, that could reduce the energy required for equivalent levels of computation.

The piece outlines four main pathways; power management, integration of large battery storage, collection and use of waste heat for district heating systems, and unconventional computing.

Combining these different research perspectives provides an argument that suggests the combining on-site power generation and storage, and waste heat reuse could allow a data center to function as a kind of neighborhood energy hub, one that could provide heat and backup electricity to nearby residents while still serving its core computational function.

The piece was published in The Conversation, and has since been widely republished.

April 2026

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RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze selected as 2026 ASHRAE Fellow

Daniel Morton — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:32:48 +0000

RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze selected as 2026 ASHRAE Fellow Daniel Morton Wed, 02/11/2026 - 11:32

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ASHRAE

ASHRAE 2026 Press Release

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, or ASHRAE, is dedicated to advancing human well-being through sustainable technology for the built environment. Founding in 1959 through the merger of professional societies dating back to 1894, ASHRAE members focus on building systems, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, refrigeration and sustainability within the industry.

Each year ASHRAE recognizes and celebrates the contributions of its outstanding members, highlighting their work and significant contributions to the field. This year RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze was selected to the 2026 cohort of 24 ASHRAE Fellows. The status of Fellow recognizes members who have attained distinction and made substantial contributions such as education, engineering design and consultation, publications, presentations and mentoring.

Congratulations Gregor!

February 2026

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The case of the vanishing seeds: How curiosity-driven research is future-proofing “Smart Windows”

Daniel Morton — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:02:14 +0000

The case of the vanishing seeds: How curiosity-driven research is future-proofing “Smart Windows” Daniel Morton Tue, 01/27/2026 - 10:02

Daniel Morton

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Read the Article

Have you ever walked into a room on a glorious Colorado summer day and felt the heat radiating through the glass?

We usually solve this by cranking up the air conditioning or closing the blinds, losing our mountain view in the process. But what if the window itself could think? A team led by Mike McGehee, a Fellow at RASEI, describes research that improves the robustness of such a device.

For years researchers have been working on “smart windows”, devices that could “sense” the conditions outside and “react” to them. This investigation centers around a promising technology called Reversible Metal Electrodeposition (RME). The technical details of this process are complex, but you can understand the concept by thinking of it as a reversible coat of paint. At the flip of a switch, a thin layer of metal, in this case silver, spreads across the glass to form a layer that tints it, blocking out the heat and the glare. Flip the switch again and the silver dissolves back into a clear liquid, making the window transparent.

Buildings are responsible for consuming around 40% of all generated energy globally, much of which is expended in regulating the temperature, heating and cooling the building interior. Installing smart windows that can react to the environmental conditions could provide a very effective mechanism to reduce energy use and slash energy bills by automatically managing how much heat enters a room. It has been estimated that just by controlling the amount of sunlight that is let into a building through a window, we could cut energy bills by up to as much as 20%.

However, there have been a number of challenges to overcome in order to take this initial discovery from the lab to a product that can be deployed for use in buildings. One challenge is that early versions of these windows started out fast but grew “lazy” over time. After a few thousand uses the tinting / de-tinting process slowed, taking almost four times longer than it did on day one.

This is where the researchers undertook some detailed investigations to identify what was going on, and what could be done to fix it. A collaboration between the McGehee group (at the �鶹��Ѱ��) and the Barile Group (at the University of Nevada) set out to find out exactly what was happening. The team decided to look closer, using a combination of high-powered x-rays and electrochemical tests. The windows were using tiny “seeds” of platinum to help the silver grow on the glass. Platinum is recognized for being tough and non-reactive, and so should be perfect as a nucleation point for the silver. Using these advanced techniques the team explored exactly what was happening to the platinum seeds during the clearing phase, when the silver “paint” is stripped away.

To their surprise, the platinum was not as tough as they initially thought. In the special liquid environment needed for the windows, the platinum seeds were actually dissolving and washing away when the window was switched to clear. As the number of seeds dropped, the silver had fewer locations to grow from, which was the cause behind the window tinting slowing.

This led the team to ask the question “What can we do to make the seeds more resilient?”, which led them to use gold in place of platinum. While gold and platinum are both precious metals, in water, which is the solvent used inside the window panels, gold is more stable and less susceptible to decomposition and dissolving. When they swapped the platinum seeds for gold ones, the results were immediate. Even after 7,500 cycles, the equivalent of years of daily use, the windows transitioned just as fast as the first time they were used.

These gold-based windows provide an exciting range of opportunities. Not only because of their improved stability over many thousands of cycles, but also because they can express multiple colors by varying the voltage, a feature of the size of the gold particles. This presents opportunities for their use in displays and communications devices. This technology offers a better, smarter window that could passively save significant amounts of energy if deployed in commercial and residential buildings. This work shows how the impact of making fundamental chemical changes can unlock the potential of new technologies.

January 2026

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Robust fast-switching black electrochromic windows based on solution-processed n-doped transparent organic conductor

Daniel Morton — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 18:55:44 +0000

Robust fast-switching black electrochromic windows based on solution-processed n-doped transparent organic conductor Daniel Morton Sun, 12/14/2025 - 11:55

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 2025

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Mesoporous optically clear heat insulators for sustainable building envelopes

Daniel Morton — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:15:09 +0000

Mesoporous optically clear heat insulators for sustainable building envelopes Daniel Morton Thu, 12/11/2025 - 17:15

SCIENCE, 2025, 390, 6778, 1171-1176

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New window insulation blocks heat, but not your view

Daniel Morton — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:24:44 +0000

New window insulation blocks heat, but not your view Daniel Morton Thu, 12/11/2025 - 09:24

Physicists at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, led by RASEI Fellow Ivan Smalyukh, have designed a new material for insulating windows that could improve the energy efficiency of buildings worldwide—and it works a bit like a high-tech version of Bubble Wrap.

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The team’s material, called Mesoporous Optically Clear Heat Insulator, or MOCHI, comes in large slabs or thin sheets that can be applied to the inside of any window. So far, the team only makes the material in the lab, and it’s not available for consumers. But the researchers say MOCHI is long-lasting and is almost completely transparent.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Today have put together a feature article that has been picked up by a number of other news outlets. Check out the feature and the follow ups with the links to the right.

December 2025

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Enhancing the Cycle Life of Reversible Silver Electrodeposition Optical Devices with Durable Gold Seed Particles

Daniel Morton — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:40:58 +0000

Enhancing the Cycle Life of Reversible Silver Electrodeposition Optical Devices with Durable Gold Seed Particles Daniel Morton Thu, 12/04/2025 - 11:40

ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2025, 17, 50, 68212-68217

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Distribution grids may be a barrier to residential electrification

Daniel Morton — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 18:57:51 +0000

Distribution grids may be a barrier to residential electrification Daniel Morton Fri, 11/21/2025 - 11:57

CELL REPORTS SUSTAINABILITY, 2025, 2, 11, 100518

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