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Energy Technologies Area (ETA) researchers are continually building on the strong scientific foundation we have developed over the past 50 years. We address the world’s most pressing climate challenges by bringing to market energy-efficient innovations across the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors. ETA is at the forefront of developing better batteries for electric vehicles; improving the country's aging electrical grid and innovating distributed energy and storage solutions; developing grid-interactive, efficient buildings; and providing the most comprehensive market and data analysis worldwide for renewable technologies like wind and solar.
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The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) Strategic Plan is the guiding force for our research and development for the next ten years. It clearly charts a path toward clean-energy solutions and focuses on five detailed Strategic Initiatives. The Plan provides an in-depth look at how ETA is accelerating research to provide affordable, clean energy to all while accomplishing deep, economy-wide decarbonization, looking to avoid a rise in global average temperature while simultaneously developing solutions to increase humanity's resilience to extreme weather volatility.
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About Us +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

New Clean Energy Program Policy Brief—Boulder, Colorado's SmartRegs for Residential Rental Housing

April 3, 2012

In 2011 the City of Boulder, Colorado enacted its “SmartRegs” ordinances that require all single family and multifamily rental properties to meet a minimum energy efficiency standard by January 2019. The SmartRegs initiative is designed to help the city achieve its ambitious carbon emissions reduction goals and to improve the quality, safety, and marketability of Boulder’s rental housing stock.

The effort involved two years of extensive stakeholder engagement and a sophisticated strategy that included dividing the SmartRegs provisions among three different ordinances to improve the chances that at least some components would be approved. All three ordinances ultimately won community and city council support by including a long (8 year) compliance period, offering financial incentives and technical assistance to building owners, and providing owners with a streamlined prescriptive process for meeting compliance.

One year after the regulations went into effect, the city had handily exceeded its first-year goals of 1,000 units inspected and 500 units achieving compliance. The program is also experiencing an unexpected bonus: some property owners are voluntarily choosing to upgrade beyond the minimum requirements. Given its broad support and successful early rollout, SmartRegs shows promise for overcoming transaction costs and reducing barriers to energy efficiency gains in the residential rental sector.

You can download the policy brief here or at Middle Income web site.