Bentley to join consortium for U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center

EXTON, PA. — Bentley Systems Inc. has announced that it has been selected to join the consortium, led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for a U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC) focused on building energy efficiency.

The new center, which President Obama and President Hu Jintao formally announced last year, will develop technologies for low-energy residential and commercial buildings, as well as work on the commercialization of those technologies and research how human behavior affects building energy use. In its role as an industrial partner, Bentley will share its expertise in software for infrastructure and provide professional training and information modeling and collaboration technology to facilitate best practices for building energy design, analysis, and simulation as well as project collaboration, reporting, and management.

"On behalf of Bentley Systems, I want to thank the U.S. Department of Energy for inviting us to participate in this crucial initiative," said Dr. Dru Crawley, Bentley director, Building Performance Products. "In Bentley’s mission of sustaining infrastructure, we look forward to working with the DOE, ORNL, LBNL, and all of the other prestigious organizations that make up this incredible team to help advance the energy performance and sustainability of buildings in China and in the United States. Bentley’s expectation is that innovations such as those generated by the CERC and the application of these advanced technologies will inspire additional initiatives that lead to better-performing buildings around the globe."

The consortium includes research partners Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Natural Resources Defense Council (Beijing branch), ICF International (Beijing branch), National Association of State Energy Offices, Association of State Energy Research and Technology Transfer Institutions, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of California, Davis. Industrial partners in addition to Bentley include Dow Chemical Company, General Electric, Honeywell, Schneider Electric, Saint-Gobain, Pegasus Investment Advisors, Climate Master, and others.

U.S. funding for the CERC over a five-year period, including contributions by consortium partners, will total at least $25 million, and Chinese counterparts will contribute an additional $25 million. In addition, the industrial partners have committed more than $16 million in in-kind resources and cash over the same five-year period.

Six major areas being considered for study at the new CERC include advanced monitoring and control systems, advanced glazing materials and systems, advanced insulation systems, cool roofs, lighting, and commercialization and policy analyses. In addition, the CERC will build a test bed facility for evaluating the performance of technologies and systems developed by the researchers. The test bed could become a long-term research facility to be used by generations of building energy engineers and scientists.

For more information, please visit www.bentley.com.