• As part of the Efficiency Exchange (EFX) conference, the UI IDL is hosting a tour of its space and two discussion panels—one on the lab’s history of collaboration with Idaho Power, and another on opportunities and barriers in energy efficiency for schools.
• The lab’s Building Simulation User’s Group lecture series covered the energy efficiency features of LEED v5. Sponsored by Idaho Power, this free monthly lecture series is available online and in person.
• The lab will soon launch an Idaho-Power-sponsored lunch-and-learn lecture series, which is available to architecture and engineering firms in Idaho Power’s service territory. If you are part of a firm and would like to request a lecture or join one of the two annual open lectures, you can find more information here: https://www.idlboise.com/content/lunch-and-learn.
• The lab led a joint discussion on building energy efficiency at Boise State University’s OSHER Lifelong Learning Institute. The discussion covered approaches to providing comfort and health in buildings using low-energy designs and methods.
• In April, the lab will participate in AIA Idaho’s Building a Better Idaho Week by hosting a lunch panel covering several aspects of efficient design. The panel will highlight free online design tools available to architects and engineers, including UW’s daylighting pattern guide, Andrew Marsh’s sun-path tools, and the collection of resources available on the lab’s website.

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• To inform a strategy for future market engagement, the MSU IDL is distributing a questionnaire to Montana mechanical, engineering, and plumbing (MEP) designers and project managers to help identify market barriers and knowledge gaps that prevent energy-efficient design.
• At the Building Codes Conference in Helena, Montana, the lab presented on heat recovery ventilators (HRVs) and how they support indoor air quality (IAQ) in residential buildings. The session provided a framework for making informed decisions that balance IAQ performance with energy efficiency, with considerations including cold-climate performance, proper selection and installation, upfront investment, and operational costs.

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• The UO IDL is incorporating new demo equipment that can showcase different ways spaces are conditioned and controlled. The lab is focusing on the educational potential of demonstrations to make energy-efficient building systems and controls more visible in the classroom. Equipment may include interchangeable HVAC and electric lighting system components that can be installed and operated inside the climate chamber (or otherwise displayed within the main lab space).
• The lab is developing lighting simulation tools that can calculate Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD)—a critical metric used to measure the amount of usable, photosynthetically active light for plant growth. The goal of this research is to give designers, planners, and operators of controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) the tools they need to better capture unrealized energy savings. These tools will help optimize daylighting for indoor agriculture, the efficacy and energy use of horticulture lighting systems, and the added energy use needed for ventilation and conditioning in these facilities.
• The lab is working with the OSU TallWood Design Institute to explore opportunities to better integrate various interior building systems like lighting, HVAC, plumbing, and acoustics with prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) and mass plywood panels (MPP) in modular housing construction. These efforts include working in collaboration with the research staff at the Baker Lighting Lab and the Energy Studies in Buildings Lab to explore solutions to integrate electrical, lighting, and acoustic treatments into system design.

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• UW IDL co-director Heather Burpee incorporated advanced performance HVAC into her architecture graduate class: Topics in High Performance Buildings. Here, students explored energy efficiency in existing buildings, Building Performance Standards, and energy-focused building audits and data collection.
• To help understand the tools and resources most needed to support the market in meeting Building Performance Standards, the lab has interviewed over 50 stakeholders, synthesizing key ideas for regional resources, new opportunities, and persistent barriers. This work also includes identifying case studies of buildings, people, or processes that have been engaged with energy efficiency upgrades and Building Performance Standards.
• Lab co-director Christopher Meek is part of a team that was awarded a new Tier 3 Population Health Initiative (PHI) Climate grant to expand the team’s work to advance urban modeling and machine learning techniques for improved indoor air quality, health, and energy efficiency for existing residential buildings in Seattle’s Duwamish Valley and beyond. This project aims to couple improved community health with building energy efficiency through community engagement and data-informed public policy.
• The lab received a competitive Upjohn Research Initiative Award from the AIA to develop a residential whole-building lifecycle carbon emissions calculator for early-stage, small-scale residential design decisions. Known as Decarbonization Analysis for Residential Architecture (DARA), this freely available open-source tool enables designers to select key project attributes, such as location, envelope, structural design, window-to-wall ratio, and HVAC system, and interactively calculate both embodied and operational carbon emissions.

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• The WSU IDL continued its work on the Oregon and Washington National Science Foundation Mass Timber Engines Development Award, supporting stakeholder discovery efforts tied to regional innovation in the built environment. As part of these efforts, the lab conducted 15 interviews at the International Mass Timber Conference in Portland, Oregon, engaging industry leaders, researchers, and practitioners. Insights from these conversations are informing emerging opportunities at the intersection of mass timber, sustainability, and regional economic development.
• Co-led by lab director Julia Day, the Human-Centric Buildings (HCB) Network convened its fourth international meeting. This work included developing resilient building interface evaluation tools to assess usability and resilience across key dimensions, such as reliability, accessibility, and responsiveness.
• Julia Day will present at the upcoming ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, sharing work related to the HCB, including a paper highlighting a global collaboration of over 210 researchers across more than 30 countries focused on advancing human-centric approaches to building design and operation. The work emphasizes that meeting energy and resilience goals is not just a technical challenge, but also a behavioral one, requiring deeper insight into how occupants interact with building systems.
• The lab is developing a live energy and environmental dashboard for WSU’s Schweitzer Engineering Hall to translate complex building systems into an accessible, real-time interface. This includes student-led development of original dashboard interface concepts, each offering unique approaches to visualizing and interacting with real-time building data, including weather conditions, wind, temperature, indoor air quality, energy use, and HVAC system performance.

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