ABSTRACT Building energy consumption (BEC) prediction is crucial in efficient energy management. This paper proposes an optimized hybrid prediction model that combines a support vector regression (SVR), a newly evolved coati optimization algorithm (COA), and a recursive feature elimination with cross-validation (RFECV) implemented on an hourly new dataset. The SVR is selected based on the experimentations conducted in this work that outperform other models. The COA is used for optimizing the hyperparameters of SVR, and RFECV is used to optimize the dataset. The SVR COA performs better than the Harris hawk optimization and Gray wolf optimization. Later, the optimized SVR is implemented on the optimized dataset, showing better accuracy and faster prediction compared with the default SVR, SVR with feature elimination, and optimized SVR models. The error metrics MAE, MAPE, RMSE, and R2 are used for the model evaluation. The testing accuracy improved by 12.34%, 10.52%, 17.02%, and 0.09%, respectively, compared to the default model.