From Trailer Homes to Net-Zero Wonders, NREL Builds on Its Building Legacy

By National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Director Martin Keller

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is a living laboratory, an environment where we are testing the newest ideas for sustainability daily—but it hasn’t always been that way.

When the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) opened in 1977, the first staffers moved into unfinished rental offices with wires dangling from the ceilings. And they were the lucky ones.

Some of those early pioneers at NREL’s predecessor remember walking in open fields to trailers that, in addition to being cramped, were hangouts for rodents and rattlesnakes. Somehow they focused on figuring out how to improve wind turbines, solar panels, and buildings despite the occasional sound of a rattle or the gnawing of a rat.

Yet as author Ernie Tucker detailed in our book Clean Energy Innovators: NREL People Working to Change the World, some powerful force drew a collection of visionaries to the campus in Golden, Colorado.

Here’s a link to a free PDF download.

These advocates had studied traditional passive solar houses in the American Southwest along with more recent theories for constructing sustainable buildings—and they made their imprint on SERI’s man-made environment.  

For example, Nancy Carlisle wanted to be an architect as a young woman. But after getting an invitation to SERI to attend President Jimmy Carter’s historic Colorado visit in 1978, she said in the Innovators book, “I simply wanted to stay in Colorado” and work at SERI.

Likewise, Chuck Kutscher jumped from the world of nuclear engineering and heat transfer to SERI a year later for a new challenge. They along with other young, hungry, and idealistic types let their ideas rise off drawing boards and become reality.

Gradually, the landscape in Golden, Colorado, transformed—and with it, America’s did too.

In 1994, Kutscher and another NREL building visionary, Craig Christensen, won an R&D 100 Award—the technology industry’s version of an Oscar—for developing a transpired solar collector, a building system to control temperatures in structures using natural airflow through perforated metal sidings.

Around that time, another NREL engineer, Ron Judkoff, who had experience in the Peace Corps in Africa, launched a crusade to make mobile homes more efficient. Judkoff, as shown in the Innovators book, would dutifully crawl over, under, and through to measure and then prescribe new methods to seal up these leaky prefabricated homes.

From the grassy lands of a former military base near Denver a new set of structures rose against the backdrop of South Table Mountain.

In 1993, NREL opened the Solar Energy Research Facility, providing 53,000 square feet of laboratory and office space. This was the first campus building project that staff took part in the design process—and even today, the stepped-back façade evokes feelings of the Southwest. Carlisle  and others wrote the first 25-year campus plan to ensure NREL buildings were contributing to energy savings.

By 2006, NREL completed the three-level Science and Technology Facility with its distinctive round entry—again a nod to traditional styles. This was designated the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum-certified federal facility, 40% more efficient than comparable labs.

And finally in 2010, NREL opened the Research Support Facility, a veritable cathedral to sustainability. This 442,907 square-foot masterpiece had overhanging eves, Kutscher and Christensen’s transpired cooling system on the exterior, and automatic lighting and window controls inside. It became the world's largest zero-energy building at that time and a truly groundbreaking example of energy-efficient and sustainable design.

The RSF, as we call the building, is absolutely elegant and amazing. I know. My office is on the fifth floor, and I marvel at how many visionary ideas are packed into this space.

This isn’t bragging. My hope is to encourage you to not only learn a bit more about how these innovators expanded our energy-efficient building world but also to get a sense of the future possibilities.

The world is undergoing an energy transition. One megatrend is the growing urbanization, where people flock to ever-expanding cities. Buildings and our built environment are critical to how we use energy wisely.

From those undeveloped sites in Golden, ideas have spread across the globe like airborne seeds. I’m proud that for nearly 50 years our laboratory has been a place where new building concepts can take hold—and when proven, take root around the world. It brings our mission home to buildings—and houses—everywhere. NREL’s legacy is truly has built on its built foundations.