Buildings consume 75% of US electricity and could be a primary demand-side management resource for the rapidly changing electric grid. We assess the technical potential grid resource from best-available building efficiency and flexibility measures in 2030 and 2050 and find that such measures could avoid up to nearly one-third of annual fossil-fired generation and one-half of fossil-fired capacity additions after 2020. Our results quantify the role that building technologies can play in the future of the US electricity system.

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This report, originally published in December 2021, has been revised in July 2022 to expand the report scope to include commercial characterization in addition to the residential characterization in the original publication. The majority of these changes are in the new Section 3.2. Additionally, to support this scope expansion, we have included the additional section authors, added two appendences, modified the executive summary and conclusions, and updated text throughout to be inclusive of both the residential and commercial sectors. iv This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

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