AI Bot Boosts Speed, Cuts Costs in Energy Modeling

New autonomous tool from Pacific Northwest National Lab aims to simplify commercial building energy analysis.

Mar. 24, 2026 at 3:38am

Got story updates? Submit your updates here. ›

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed an AI-driven, autonomous bot called Building Energy Model AI (BEM-AI) that can quickly produce complete building energy models to help speed up the evaluation process for commercial building construction. BEM-AI breaks down the complex task of energy modeling into subtasks that can be handled by specialized agents, reducing the need for extensive subject matter expertise.

Why it matters

Building energy modeling is a crucial but time-consuming process that requires specialized expertise. BEM-AI aims to democratize access to these tools, allowing a wider range of stakeholders like designers, architects, engineers, and code officials to more easily evaluate a building's expected energy use and make informed design decisions.

The details

BEM-AI uses "agentic AI" to independently assign subtasks like gathering climate data, analyzing building materials, and running energy simulations to specialized agents. In tests, the bot successfully modeled energy savings for commercial buildings in Florida. The researchers hope the open-source platform will encourage the building energy modeling community to expand its capabilities by contributing more data and examples.

  • The BEM-AI research was recently published in the journal Energy and Buildings.

The players

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

A U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Richland, Washington that conducts research on a variety of energy and environmental topics.

Weili Xu

A building modeling expert and lead author on the BEM-AI research paper.

Got photos? Submit your photos here. ›

What they’re saying

“With BEM-AI, we are broadening the potential access to these complicated tools that require a lot of subject matter expertise. Access to a well-developed autonomous energy modeling bot helps all stakeholders in the life cycle of building construction, from designers, architects, engineers or code officials.”

— Weili Xu, Building modeling expert

What’s next

The researchers hope the energy modeling community will help expand BEM-AI's capabilities by providing more building data and examples to test the platform.

The takeaway

BEM-AI represents an innovative use of AI to simplify a complex and time-consuming process, potentially making building energy analysis more accessible to a wider range of professionals involved in commercial construction.