The Green Building Research Center offers a number of resources to support the sustainable design and operation of buildings on the UC Berkeley campus and university facilities across the state.

Best Practice Awards

The Best Practice Awards recognize outstanding energy efficiency and sustainability projects implemented at UC and CSU campuses. The GBRC has partnered with the Best Practice program for the last two years to write case studies for the winning projects. The awards program and case studies are intended to:

1. Highlight the achievements that University of California and California State University campuses have made through innovative and cost-effective energy efficiency projects.

2. Showcase the projects as models to be used by other campuses pursuing energy efficiency and sustainability goals.

3. Provide energy managers, sustainability managers, project managers, and other campus planning staff with valuable lessons learned that can be transferred to their own campuses.

Best Practice Award winners are announced every summer at the annual UC/CSU/CCC Sustainability Conference. The 2008 Conference will be held at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, from July 31st to August 3rd. Funding for the Best Practice Awards is provided by the UC/CSU/IOU Energy Efficiency Partnership Program.

The UC Office of the President recently pursued LEED-EB certification of its headquarters to gain hands-on understanding of the LEED-EB compliance and documentation process. This was done in part to prepare UCOP to assist campuses that will be completing their own projects under a new system-wide pilot LEED-EB policy. In August 2007, the U.S. Green Building Council presented the Franklin Building with a LEED-EB Silver plaque for its commitment to sustainable operations and maintenance procedures. The GBRC is pleased to provide a detailed case study documenting the green practices implemented at the building, UCOP's impressive achievements, and important lessons learned along the way.

Download the LEED-EB case study

Building Dashboard

The GBRC has developed a Building Dashboard that provides users with historical and real-time performance metrics for UC Berkeley campus buildings. The system consists of two main types of information: (1) monthly representations of energy, water, and other metrics, and (2) real-time displays of building data. The Dashboard enables benchmarking and automated comparisons between periods of time, and/or between campus buildings. The Building Dashboard is an important tool that can inform the campus community about the buildings they inhabit, educating users about energy efficiency on a personal and effective scale. The GBRC hopes that providing access to real-time data will inspire buildings, departments, and dormitories to set goals and/or establish competitions to reduce energy usage.

Access the Building Dashboard

Ecocharrette Support

An ecocharrette is a goal-setting exercise that focuses on bringing sustainability and energy efficiency into a building's design in the concept planning phase. Bringing the project team together early in the design process is important for developing integrated design solutions, and for ensuring consensus among the various stakeholders. GBRC staff provide expertise in a range of building science areas at UC Berkeley ecocharrettes to help project teams select sustainability goals and develop strategies for achieving these goals.