The Smart Buildings Center is a proud partner of the BEACON project and is celebrating the successes of the first cohort, we’re happy to join with Commerce in celebrating this historic moment.

On Friday, March 13, BEACON fellows, Climate Corps fellows, and BEACON and Climate Corps partners gathered in Bellevue to celebrate the end of the first cohort of BEACON fellows. Thank you to PSE for hosting this incredible group.

BEACON fellows presented on the highlights, successes, and lessons learned from their 10-month fellowships. They reflected on the technical support they provided to building owners, the sustainability projects they supported at their host sites, the relationships they built with utility providers, and the presentations they gave to local community groups.

Over the past 10 months, BEACON fellows conducted outreach to almost 200 unique entities and served 130 building owners and more than 400 buildings across 17 counties. Services included providing CBPS education, Clean Buildings Portal support, energy benchmarking services, energy management planning, operations and maintenance program support, and exemption and incentive application assistance.

BEACON fellows officially end their fellowships on March 31. With this date just on the horizon, project partners also shared words of encouragement for what’s next as fellows start their own job search.

As a reminder, BEACON Project partners are currently working to secure funding to stand up a second cohort of BEACON fellows, and there will be a gap in services between the first and second cohort. An announcement will be made when no-cost BEACON support resumes with a second cohort of fellows.

Meantime, you can receive ongoing no-cost CBPS support through the Commerce Clean Buildings Team and Smart Buildings Center Clean Buildings Help Desk.