Roadmap to Establish the Building Energy Testing and Certification (BETCC) Center at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia

Recently, the team comprising of experts from Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI), University of Florida (UF), and Milenium Solutions (now EnviroECOats) won the global Million Cool Roofs (MCR) Challenge conducted by Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (now Clean Cooling Collaborative) in collaboration with the Global Cool Cities Alliance (GCCA). The prize money will be used to scale up the deployment of solar-reflective “cool” roofs in the Republic of Indonesia and to establish a Building Energy Testing and Certification Center (BETCC) at UPI.

As international visiting scholars to the UF and with the support of WinBuild Inc., an energy consulting company in Fairfax, Virginia, Dr. Beta Paramita (Project Lead of MCR) and Try Ramadan of UPI are exploring opportunities for further research collaboration with other US universities. During their visit here, in the US, they will be visiting the US national laboratories such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Oakridge National Laboratory (ORNL) whey they will undergo necessary trainings for the establishment of BETCC at UPI. The team will also meet with key Climateworks Foundation and US- Department of Energy’s (DOE) Net Zero World (NZW) Program staff to explore collaboration.

This fits well with objectives of US collaboration with the Republic of Indonesia in the NZE Program and provide capacity building for the Indonesian partners as well. These activities are supported by World Class University (WCU) Program of UPI, funded by Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP). The visiting scholars started their journey on October 18^th. They met with Prof. Diah Ayu Maharani (Education and Culture attaché ) and Bambang S. Achirudin (Education and Culture attaché affairs ) at the Embassy of The Republic of Indonesia on Wednesday 19^th of October. They briefed the embassy staff about their program in the USA. Dr. Diah Ayu Maharani and Bambang S. Achirudin both were very supportive and excited about the NZW opportunity, and especially the University collaboration.

Currently, the visiting scholars are at UF with whom they have signed an international collaborative agreement for mutual exchange of research, faculty, and students. Under this agreement, project leads Dr. Beta Paramita from UPI and Dr. Ravi Srinivasan from the M.E., Rinker School of Construction Management at UF continue to work on education curriculum and sustainable low-income housing design and development.

The visiting scholars will also work with Mr. Bipin Shah, WinBuild Inc. which is already engaged with UF on several collaborative research and development of niche energy technologies. WinBuild was instrumental in facilitating the cool roof technology transfer to Indonesia under license agreement to UPI. In addition, WinBuild is helping these researchers to establish an energy and testing center at the UPI and on design of prefabricated sustainable low-income housing for developing countries.

The engagement with the US Net Zero World (NWZ) program will help to works closely with its Indonesian partners on high-performance building technologies, laboratory testing, and standards development. The Building Energy Testing and Certification Center at UPI will support implementation of the building energy codes and standards development and widespread implementation in the archipelago. They will be engaging with NZW program and US national laboratories from Oct 30 to Nov 14 on testing building envelope technologies and standards developments.

The Indonesian researchers will visit Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) as a part of the US NZW initiative to learn about the instruments used for the testing of building insulation materials, sun exposure and window durability, and reflective roof materials. During the training workshop at these labs, the Indonesian researchers will learn how to test and measure cool roof material solar reflectance, and thermal emittance. LBNL researchers will demonstrated how to conduct cool roof accelerated aging, an R&D 100 Award-winning, to test cool roof aged thermal properties and adopt the same for Indonesia, while ORNL will showcase the world-renowned 3D-Printing laboratory and NREL will showcase the Durability and Solar laboratory and it state of an art equipment’s. These knowledgebases will assist in incorporating the requirements in the Indonesian building energy codes. During their visit to ORNL the scholars will also visit University of Tennessee and explore collaboration opportunities.

The NZW building sector technical lead Dr. Wei Feng from LBNL introduced to the visiting researchers on long-term energy and CO₂ emissions modeling research and cost-benefit analysis. The modeling work showed that both passive and active cooling technologies can help Indonesia effectively reduce its cooling energy demand.

NZW program aims to help its partner countries to build capacity for energy-efficient technology testing and standard development. The knowledge from laboratory training will be used to develop standards of building envelope technology testing, develop technology rating methods, and upgrade building codes and standards in Indonesia.