The General Services Administration's (GSA) Green Proving Ground program has selected 17 emerging and sustainable technologies for evaluation. The GPG program leverages GSA’s real estate portfolio to evaluate innovative building technologies in real-world settings.
The GSA plans to invest $9.6 million to install and evaluate these technologies. The evaluations are intended to assess the technical and operational characteristics of the technologies. And their potential for future wide-scale adoption. The technologies will also advance the Biden Administration’s Climate Smart Buildings Initiative, which aims to increase performance contracting to deliver greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
This year’s program focuses on the following technologies:
Building envelopes and enclosures act as thermal barriers to help regulate interior temperatures and can reduce energy use significantly when well -sealed and insulated. The GPG program will evaluate Lamarr.ai’s automated diagnostic technology to help assess building envelope performance and identify cost-effective retrofits that improve efficiency.
Healthy and resilient buildings enhance occupant comfort and building health while including durable materials that can sustainably reduce climate change impact risks. The GPG program will evaluate two low embodied carbon cement technologies, from C-Crete Technologies and Sublime Systems. The program will also evaluate a wearable light exposure measurement system from Blue Iris Labs, an LED troffer retrofit with germicidal ultraviolet-C light from Louvers International, a diagnostic and data analytics platform for pathogen protection and energy management from SafeTraces, Inc., and energy-saving, phase-change-material ceiling tiles from Armstrong World Industries.
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) in commercial buildings comprise up to 44 percent of total on-site energy use. The GPG program will evaluate technologies that save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The technologies include modular ice-based energy storage from Nostromo Energy, a modular cold-climate air-source heat pump from Trane Technologies, specifications for Very High Efficiency HVAC from the Institute for Market Transformation, an air conditioning system incorporating a liquid desiccant and evaporative cooling from Blue Frontier, a refrigerant life cycle management strategy from êffecterra, and an IoT-based building management system from 75F.
On-site renewables are essential for meeting the Administration’s 2030 100 percent carbon-free electricity goal. The GPG program will evaluate a geothermal retrofit solution from Brightcore Energy, battery energy storage systems from Gridscape Solutions and Moxion Power, and a building-integrated photovoltaic sunshade from Vitro Architectural Glass and Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope.
The technologies will be tested at GSA’s Applied Innovation Learning Labs to identify replicable combinations of technologies that help deliver net-zero operational emissions.
The results of the evaluations are expected to be released in 2026.
