Health Co-Benefits of the Built Environment

Welcome to the public beta version of the Co-Benefits of the Built Environment (CoBE) tool. CoBE was built by researchers from Harvard, Boston University, and Oregon State University to quantify the health benefits of energy efficiency measures in buildings.

CoBE v.2 Has Arrived

• Capable of evaluating impacts of both commercial and residential buildings.
• Can perform impact evaluations based on user input data
• Includes health and climate impacts, in dollar terms
• Can calculate impacts for both electricity use, and heating fuels

This tool is useful to building owners, operators, investors, and others, who want to better understand the impact of their buildings’ energy consumption and are interested in reducing that impact. The CoBE tool can be used to assess current building performance and for future planning. CoBE provides a footprint of building portfolios— consisting of the portfolio’s emissions (greenhouse gas and air pollutants), climate impacts, and public health impacts of building energy use— while benchmarking emission intensities against climate policies. 

Our paper on the CoBE Study and Methodology is now available for open access. Click below to read up on how CoBE projects emissions reduction, health, and climate co-benefits of energy savings through 2050.

We are always working on ways to make this tool more meaningful. In this version, you will find enhancements that include:

Click here to add your contact information to be notified about updates with the CoBE tool.