If you haven’t been down to Channel Center in Boston’s Innovation District then you haven’t seen the Fraunhofer banners, googled them, and discovered that they’re going to transform clean energy in Boston, the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world.  In the next two years, Fraunhofer will be on its way to becoming a household name, and people from all over will visit.

So what’ll be inside its 100 year old retrofitted factory building?  Let’s just say, you’ll want to take everything and put it in your apartment, condo, home, estate, or tent in Dewey Square.  Fraunhofer’s Building Technology Showcase will be a living laboratory for the public, a clean energy incubator, and the German research institution’s headquarters.

You’ll walk into the exhibition area for an x-ray viewing of your house.  You’ll see what’s really behind the wall of a building, why all those materials are there, and how Fraunhofer is making them more efficient.  You’ll see demonstrations of how much energy your refrigerator is using, how effective your insulation is for cooling, heating, and more.

Professors and policymakers will share the latest innovations, and job trainings will educate green collar workers on integrating these cutting edge systems into their work.

Boston is second in the nation in the number of green buildings, and just last week, Massachusetts was named the most energy efficient state in the country!

Buildings are the biggest energy user in the United States.  New buildings being green are great, but even if all new buildings were built efficiently, only a portion of our energy use would be cut.  The secret to quelling our energy addiction may and probably resides in the refrofitting of existing buildings. Fraunhofer’s Building Technology Showcase not only asks – how do we make an old city like Boston more green?  It provides an answer.

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