Can you cut building energy use in half while holding construction costs steady? Well, that's the goal of participants in the Building America Initiative, a nationwide demonstration program sponsored by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Building America projects aim to produce homes that use half the energy of a typical home for heat, cooling, hot water, and lighting, but at a square-foot cost in line with ordinary houses. Along the way, DOE and its private-sector partners hope to step up the pace at which new building ideas develop and spread. Projects in the program are now off the drawing board and into the field. In fact, Building Science Consortium (BSC) of Westford,
