PlainBillCongress, translated.Legislation. Context. Public interest.Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Hearings held. Hearings printed: S.Hrg. 114-166.
Congressional Research Service
Version 00 · Introduced in Senate · Apr 22, 2015
Smart Building Acceleration Act
Directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to: (1) conduct a survey of privately owned smart buildings throughout the nation, select at least one building each from an appropriate range of building sizes and types, and evaluate the costs and benefits of such buildings using the guidelines of the Federal Energy Management Program relating to whole-building evaluation, measurement, and verification; and (2) establish a program to establish one or more smart buildings under the jurisdiction of the General Services Administration and the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Veterans Affairs to demonstrate and evaluate the costs and benefits of smart buildings. Requires such evaluations to include an identification of which advanced building technologies are most cost-effective and show the most promise for increasing building energy savings, increasing service performance to building occupants, and reducing environmental impacts.
Defines a "smart building" to mean a building with an energy system that:
Showing the opening paragraphs of the official summary.
is flexible and automated;
has extensive operational monitoring and communication connectivity, allowing remote monitoring and analysis of all building functions;
is integrated with the overall building operations for control of energy generation, consumption, and storage; and
communicates with utilities and other third party commercial entities.
Directs DOE: (1) as part of DOE's Better Building Challenge, to develop a smart building accelerator in consultation with major private sector property owners to demonstrate innovative policies and approaches that will accelerate the transition to smart buildings; and (2) to conduct research and development to address key barriers to the integration of advanced building technologies and to accelerate the transition to smart buildings.
People & committees
Sen. Cantwell, Maria [D-WA] · D–WA
Legislative record
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Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Hearings held. Hearings printed: S.Hrg. 114-166.
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Introduced in Senate
Primary sources
Text links open the official source. We currently store references to these documents.
Source last updated: Sep 8, 2026. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
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