Imagine architects and engineers having a robust simulation engine to accurately model all types of energy use within a building: heating, cooling, lighting, ventilation, and equipment. Imagine them testing, optimizing, and redesigning buildings while still on the drawing board to maximize energy efficiency - long before the first cement is ever poured. EnergyPlus, created by a team at LBNL, is a next-generation energy software simulation program for building design that has the potential to save billions of dollars in energy costs to America. The program allows users to calculate the impacts of different heating, cooling, and ventilating systems, as well as various types of lighting and windows. The "Plus" in EnergyPlus allows the calculation of indirect environmental effects associated with a building's energy use - such as atmospheric pollutants produced at power plants that supply electricity to the building.

As part of the technology transfer effort, copyright licensing partnerships were established with several entities, including the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign, the Department of Energy, and the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory. To bring EnergyPlus to the marketplace, a creative, scalable licensing scheme was implemented to address the needs of diverse groups of users. This included coming up with alternatives to licensing, such as no-cost downloads for internal use, nominal cost, code downloads for collaborative developers, and commercialization licenses for private distributors.