Green Building and Energy Efficiency

How buildings use energy and how design, efficiency upgrades and programs can lower energy costs for the people who live and work in them. Much of this work is done with K-12 teachers and national laboratory partners.

These are the projects and publications we have done in this area. Each project links to its full page on erickjonesphd.com, and each publication links to the paper.

Projects

Publications

• Javanpour, S., Lopez, L., Aghapour, R., Fan, H., Fand, Y., Patel, N.D., Shah, H.P., Shortes, Z., Jones, E.C., Jr., & Chen, V.C.P. (2026). A design and analysis of computer experiments process for sustainable building design. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2026.
• Lee, C., Reyes-Sanchez, A., Perez-Cortes, L., Aroul, R., Jones, E.C., Jr., & Park, J.Y. (2026). NZHR: An EnergyPlus-integrated serious game with AI teammate for residential retrofit decision-making. Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Sustainability Week, 595–596. Paper
• Zagozda, K., Wheelock, R., Aghapour, R., Rahman Mohammadpour, S., Sood, J., Jones, E.C., Jr., & Chen, V.C.P. (2025). Bringing college level engineering research experiences into the K-12 classroom. ASEE Gulf Southwest Annual Conference, Arlington, TX. Paper
• Aghapour, R., Jones, E.C., Jr., & Alavi, S. (2024). Green building design surrogate optimization: Exploring off the shelf machine learning and mixed integer programming integrations. Proceedings of the 9th North American Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, Washington, D.C., 558–568. Paper
• Thomason, L., Hovey, J., Sigler, J., Smalls, R., Rahman Mohammadpour, S., Sharma, V., Sood, J., Jones, E.C., Jr., Rosenberger, J.M., & Chen, V.C.P. (2024). Training teachers to employ design and analysis of computer experiments for research on sustainable building design. ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, OR. Paper
• Jones, E.C., Jr., & Reyes, A. (2023). Identifying themes in energy poverty research: Energy justice implications for policy, programs, and the clean energy transition. Energies, 16(18), 6698. Paper
• Jones, E.C., Jr., Chen, V.C.P., Sharma, V., Gudikandula, S., Smalls, R., & Sigler, J. (2023). Training teachers to integrate a sustainability assessment for green building and retrofitting project into a K-12 classroom. ASEE Gulf Southwest Annual Conference. Paper
• Harmon, D., Kemabonta, T., Moss, J., Jones, E.C., Jr., & Robison, A. (2021). When the Lone Star froze over: Winter Storm Uri and the lived experiences of Texas low-income communities [Report]. Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute (TEPRI). Paper
• Jones, E.C., Jr. (2021). Racial disparities among lower-income energy consumers [White paper]. Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative. Paper
• Jones, E.C., Jr. (2021). Racial disparities in energy. White paper, Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative. Paper
• Jones, E.C., Jr., Harmon, D., & Kemabonta, T. (2021). Energy and emissions savings potential of renewable thermal technologies in Houston, Texas [Report]. Renewable Thermal Alliance, Yale Center for Business and the Environment. Paper
• Jones, E.C., Jr., Moss, J., & Kemabonta, T. (2021). Lived experiences of Winter Storm Uri [Blog post]. Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute (TEPRI). Paper
• Kemabonta, T., Jones, E.C., Jr., Harmon, D., & Pittman, J. (2021). A new approach to developing community solar projects for LMI communities in ERCOT's competitive electricity markets. 2021 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC), 86–93. Paper
• Harmon, D., Jones, E.C., Jr., Wolfe, E., & Moss, J. (2020). Pathways for DERs to reduce energy burdens in Harris County. ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings.