The United States Department of Energy Office of Industrial Technology`s Technology Benefits Recording System

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Industrial Technology`s (OIT`s) Technology Benefits Recording System (TBRS) was developed by Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL). The TBRS is used to organize and maintain records of the benefits accrued from the use of technologies developed with the assistance of OIT. OIT has had a sustained emphasis on technology deployment. While individual program managers have specific technology deployment goals for each of their ongoing programs, the Office has also established a separate Technology Deployment Division whose mission is to assist program managers and research and development partners commercialize technologies. As part of this effort, the Technology Deployment Division developed an energy-tracking task which has been performed by PNL since 1977. The goal of the energy-tracking task is to accurately assess the energy savings impact of OIT-developed technologies. In previous years, information on OIT-sponsored technologies existed in a variety of forms--first as a hardcopy, then electronically in several spreadsheet formats that existed in multiple software programs. The TBRS was created in 1993 for OIT and was based on information collected in all previous years from numerous industrial contacts, vendors, and plants that have installed OIT-sponsored technologies. The TBRS contains information on technologies commercialized between 1977more » and the present, as well as information on emerging technologies in the late development/early commercialization stage of the technology life cycle. For each technology, details on the number of units sold and the energy saved are available on a year-by-year basis. Information regarding environmental benefits, productivity and competitiveness benefits, or impact that the technology may have had on employment is also available.« less