Between the Poles

More than 20'000 Energy Star certified buildings in the U.S. in 2012

Energy use in commercial buildings is responsible for 17 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.   The EPA launched Energy Star certification in 1992. Energy Star is a market-based partnership to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency.  To earn Energy Star certification commercial buildings must perform in the top 25 percent of buildings with similar specifications nationwide.  Certification requires verification by a professional engineer or a registered architect.

Energy Star certified buildings use an average of 35 percent less energy and produce 35 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than average buildings.  The EPA says that Energy Star prevented more than 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

Acccording to the EPA in 2012, there were more than 20,000 Energy Star certified buildings in the U.S., up 24% over the previous year.  The top U.S. cities in terms of number of Energy Star certified buildings are

1. Los Angeles - 528 buildings.
2. Washington, D.C. - 462
3. Chicago - 353
4. New York - 325
5. Atlanta - 304
6. San Francisco - 291
7. Houston - 241
8. Dallas Ft-Worth - 214
9. Phoenix - 202
10. Boston - 188

The difference between energy conservation and energy efficiency

There's a fascinating post on the Sustainable Buildings Centre blog that outlines how the world energy community has tended to stop using "energy conservation" and to use "energy efficiency" instead.

According to the blog post, after the 1970s oil crisis, in the framework of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) the International Energy Agency (IEA) was established by the International Energy Program agreement, which was amended in September 2008. Neither the original agreement or the later revison  mention “energy efficiency”, but fo refer to “energy conservation” and the goal of reducing the growth of energy consumption:

exchange of national experiences and information on energy conservation; ways and means for reducing the growth of energy consumption through conservation.

The author of the post then did some research on Google and compiled some fascinating statistics on the number of mentions of the two terms in books indexed by Google.  The results showed that the use of "energy conservation" in books increased exponentially in the 1970s, but then dramatically dropped in the early 1980s. "Energy efficiency" on the other hand had a much slower rise in the 1970s, but surpassed "energy conservation" by the middle of the 1980s.

After further research, it turned up that the Shared Goals of the IEA adopted at the IEA Ministers meeting in Paris in June 1993, was the first official mention of “energy efficiency” in the context of the IEA.

Improved energy efficiency can promote both environmental protection and energy security in a cost-effective manner. There are significant opportunities for greater energy efficiency at all stages of the energy cycle from production to consumption. Strong efforts by governments and all energy users are needed to realise these opportunities.

The author of the post notes that ”reducing the growth of energy consumption” disappeared along with "energy conservation".  Apparently, the energy community decided to replace the concept of “energy conservation” with “energy efficiency” which as the the author of the post points out is not the same thing.  Energy efficiency is the ratio between the energy service delivered and the energy consumed to deliver said service. In other words, doing the same with less.  Energy conservation involves reducing overall energy consumption in addition to improving energy efficiency.

This may have to do with the different emissions goals of the developed world and the developing world, principally China, but also India, Brazil, and others, in reducing emissons.  China's goal is to reduce its energy intensity, the amount of energy required to produce a unit of GDP, because China will not agree to halt its economic development (China's per capita emissions are much less than the United States) and so its emissions will continue to grow, but not as rapidly. The developed world, especially the EU, has tended to set goals to reduce the absolute level of emissions.

RICS BIM: Status of the UK Government's BIM initiative

Yesterday at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors RICS BIM National Conference 2013, Prof David Philp, Head of BIM Implementation, Cabinet Office, UK Government gave the keynote address on the status of the Government Construction Strategy 2016 BIM objective.  The overarching aim of the Government's initative is to reduce the cost of Government construction projects by 20% (cost is king) and to reduce the UK's carbon intensity (carbon is queen) in line with its EU carbon committments. 

Digital Built Britain

To reach its goal for the construction industry the UK Government has undertaken several initatives, one of which is a commitment to embrace Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Government projects over a 5-year time frame, to encourage industry to participate in this effort, and to position the UK to become a world leader in BIM.  Dr Philp sees BIM as essentially value creating collaboration through the entire life-cycle of an asset, supported by the creation and exchange of shared 3D models and the intelligent, structured data attached to them.  The inital focus is on the design/build part of the lifecycle, but the government has said that "the 20% saving refers to CapEx cost savings however we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle"

The UK Government has explicitly targeted Level 2 BIM in the maturity ramp, defined as “file based collaboration and library management.”  Level 2 BIM is a series of domain specific models (e.g. architectural, structural, services etc) with a single environment where structured data can be shared based on COBie UK 2012.

The Government's BIM roadmap is aggressive.  In 2012 it focussed on discovery through pilot projects, notably the Ministry of Justice Cookham Wood project, a £20 mllion project where it is estimated that BIM saved hundreds of thousands of pounds in CAPEX costs.   In 2013 BIM uptake is expected to accelerate so that by 2015 all government departments will be fully BIM Level 2 enabled.  In the initial phases the UK Government is taking the leadership role, but it is encouraging industry to take an increasingly more important role in leading the initiative.

Dr. Philp annouced a number of supporting documents and collateral wil be available by Feb 28, 2013, most notably PAS 1192 Part 2.  PAS 1192/2 supports the Construction BIM Strategy to achieve Level 2 compliance.  It specifies requirements for achieving BIM Level 2, sets set out the framework for collaborative working on BIM enabled projects and provides specific guidance for the information management requirements associated with projects delivered using BIM.  The intended audience for the PAS includes organizations and individuals responsible for the procurement, design, construction, and delivery of buildings and infrastructure assets:owners, managers, designers, and contractors.

It was interesting to hear that the EU seems to be investigating following the UK and Dutch BIM initiatives in mandating BIM for public construction projects.

Distributech 2013: LEED credits for demand response for commercial buildings by June 2013

In the U.S. buildings are responsible for 72% of U.S. electricity demand, 55% of U.S. natural gas demand, and 40 % of U.S. CO2 emissions.  36% per cent of the buildings electricity load is due to commercial buildings.

California has some of the most aggressive mandated emissions reduction targets in the country.  They include

• 33% renewable energy by 2020
• Reduction of GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020
• The California Public Utilities Commission's Long Term Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan calls for 60% to 80% statewide reduction in electrical lighting consumption by 2020. (lighting accounts for nearly 30% of California's electricity use.
• New residential construction to be net-zero by 2020.
• New commercial construction is to be net-zero by 2030.
• Governor Brown’s Executive Order B-18-12 calls for a 20% reduction in state energy purchases by 2018.

LEED

The US Green Building Council is responsible for the enormously successful LEED program.  Currently 10.3 billion square feet have been registered, of which 2.7 billion square feet has been certified under the LEED program.  According to the USGBC, currently 1.7 million square feet are LEED certified every day.

Last year at Distributech the US GBC and its partners Environment Defense Fund, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and Skipping Stone launched a LEED-DR pilot program (DRPP) designed to encourage the adoption of demand response among owners of commercial buildings who have generally lagged in adopting DR.  Southern California Edison (SCE) is a major sponsor of the LEED-DR initiative.

Demand response at Southern California Edison

This year Mark Martinez of SCE gave an overview of  SCE's DR program.  In the U.S., commercial buildings represent 36% of the electricity load, but the majority of commercial building owners have shied away from DR programs.  A number of reasons are given for this.

• Limited number of energy focussed facility managers
• Lack of familiarity with utility DR programs
• Perception that DR is disruptive
• Concerns over loss of control
• Lack of specific knowledge around costs/benefits
• Concerns over ongoing operation changes

In the past utilities have paid major users, typically large industrial customers, not to use electric power at times of peak load.  The process has typically been manual, managed by telephone. 

But now SCE is reaching out to a much broader group of consumers necessitating automated demand response (ADR).  Its approach for motivating  commercial customers to adopt ADR is both a carrot and a stick.

The carrot

For nonresidential new construction SCE offers financial incentives,  $300 per kW of verified automated load shedding  and up 100% of the incremental cost of DR enabling equipment.

The stick

Given the state's aggresive emissions reduction program many building owners can see the writing on the wall as the state moves in the direction of mandating DR through the state building code.

The California Energy Code, part 6 of the California Building Standards Code which is Title 24 of the California Code of Regulations, were created by the California Building Standards Commission in 1978 in response to a legislative mandate to reduce California's energy consumption. The standards are updated periodically by the California Energy Commission to allow incorporation of new energy efficiency technologies and methods.

For example, smart lighting  is now mandatory in California.  The California Energy Commission recently updated its Title 24 Energy Efficiency Standards, improving what “up to code” means by 25 percent for residential buildings and 30 percent for commercial buildings. The new standards, which take effect January 1, 2014, introduce requirements for photosensors, occupancy sensors and multi-level lighting controls.  In the not too distant future, many expect that DR will also be mandated through the building code.

The benefits to commercial building owners from participating in SCE's DR program are

• Incentives for early adopters that won't be available when DR is mandated.
• Avoid retrofit costs later. 
• Claim LEED points

From SCE's perspective the LEED-DR program helps get people to start thinking about DR when they design buildings.

DR and peak load management

Many utilties are finding that DR is the least cost and best fit for peak load management. It is much cheaper than building additional gas-fired 'peakers".  Automated DR will enable SCE to shed load much more rapidly than is currently possible. The California ISO, which is responsible for operating most of the grid in California, currently does not count DR as a dispatchable resource because it is not as fast and reliable as the ISO would like. As DR becomes more automated, it should move in the direction of becoming a dispatchable resource.

LEED DR credits

The basic requirement for LEED-DR credits are that the building must be capable of shedding 20kW or 10% of load whichever is greater. They can sell this to an aggregator or to the utility. To earn LEED DR credits the owner needs to demonstrate curtailment. This often means that tenants and others participating in the program will require training.

In June after a mandatory ballot, LEED V4 including LEED DR will come into force.  At that time developers who satisfy the requirements for LEED DR will get full LEED credits.

Geodesign Summit: Changing how we manage our built environment

David Bartlett, who leads IBM's Smarter Planet initiative, believes there is an " immediate requirement to significantly and urgently change the way our built environment is managed."  And he is very sanquine about the capacity of our evolving technology to do this.  The Internet of Things is approaching a trillion objects.   Moore's law conrtinues to operate so we have incredible processing power.  The cloud is enablng us to make this processing power available to just about anybody with any type of device any where. Big data technology is enablng analytics in real-time.  We are rapidly approaching havng enough computing capacity to capture digitally, visualize and model our entire built environment.  IBM's Smarter Planet initiative is aimed at helping to make this happen.  According to David 42% of the world's energy goes to buildings so improving the efficiency of buildings is a primary focus of the Smarter Planet intiiative.

In October 2009 President Obama signed a directive calling for a more sustainable operations  strategy across the federal government. Commercial buildings use roughly 40 percent of the energy in the United States and the federal government owns approximately 182 million square feet of office space nationwide.  The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has a goal of reducing energy usage across federal buildings at least 30 % by 2015.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
The GSA has contracted IBM to create a cloud-based centralized system that will monitor building performance and feed information into a central building management dashboard. It is expected that better analytics will help the government automate building controls to help property managers take more active control over building performance.

The initial focus during the first year of the smart building initiative will be 50 buildings (including the White House) that have already been identified as energy inefficient. It is estimated that the project could save approximately $15 million in operational costs annually.

Where do we start ?

A frequent question that David often gets after an organization buys into the smarter planet vision is where do we start.  IBM has developed a capability maturity model that offers a roadmap for organizations to use to assess their current situation to determine at what stage they are and then provides guidance to what they should prioritize to get to the next stage.

Motivating change

One of the most important tools in motivating change is transparency.  The internet faciliates transparency.  President Obama's administration has made government transparency using the internet a top priority.  David has found that transparency and gamification is extremely powerful in motivating change and in overcoming institutionalized inefficiencies ("but we have always done it this way").

Crowdsourcing green at the Los Angeles Unified School District

IBM has found that educational institutions and defense departments are the most receptive to the Smarter Planet vision. 

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is an interesting example.  LAUSD, which is the second largest school district in the country, decided it wanted to be the nation's greenest school district..  LAUSD has 700,000 students and more than 14,000 buildings spread out over 710 square miles.  But they had no budget for doing the green initative.  What they did have was an IBM asset management system and a lot of students with mobile phones.

Students, teachers and staff became part of the solution.  A mobile app developed by an IBM partenr was installed on students and others' mobile phones that made them all green monitors and reporters identifying maintenance issues such as leaky faucets and broken air conditioning units by sending text messages and photos through their mobile phones. The mobile app sends the photos and texts for analysis to the server where a GIS shows staff where the problem is located and records the problem in the asset management system.  Gamification was used to encourage compeitition, for example, for who is the best green reporter.  Within the first eight months of implementing the program LAUSD responded to more than 750 maintenance requests. Things are getting fixed and students and others feel like active participants in the program to make the schools greener. 

IBM plans to announce the next three school districts to participate in the Smarter Planet program.

Geodesign Summit: Creating 3D BIM models for the entire LA community college system

Michael Rendler is the Director of e7 Architectural Studio which is a non-profit organization working with the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD).  Its goals are to assist in designing environmentally sound and sustainable additions to current and future campuses.  Michael gave a fascinating overview of how 3D models for all the buildings on LACCD's mulitple campuses were developed.

The LACCD is the largest community college district in the United States and serves more than 250,000 students annually at nine colleges, spread throughout 36 cities in the greater Los Angeles area.  About eight years ago it was decided to initiate a project ro create 3D BIM models of all the buildings on the LACCD  campuses.  One of the most important motivations for creating these models was that BIM models would faciliate energy performance analyses of LACCD buildings. 

There are several very interesting and unique aspects to the development of these models.  First of all the models were created entirely by LACCD students.  Existing structures were laser scanned and BM models were developed from the point clouds. 

Secondly, to ensure a uniform representation of all the buildings across all of the campuses, it was decided to adopt standards wherever possible.  The standards used include IFC, SDSFIE, OMNIClass, and COBIE.

Thirdly, the BIM models were stored in a geospatial database (Oracle Spatial) using real world coordinates.  Real world coordinates enabled the models to be easily integrated with geospatial data from a variety of sources.

The models could then be used for a variety of purposes including visualization, energy performance modeling, predictive maintenance,  and safety and security simulations.

For the safety and security simulation the models were brought into a gaming environment to allow  gamification of safety procedures.

Geospatial technology for the energy industry.

Geopatial Media is publishing a special annual edition of Geospatial World magazine in January.   They have invited geospatial leaders representing the stakeholders communities of the geospatial industry globally to share their views and perspectives on different aspects of the geospatial eco-system. 

I was invited to share my perspective on geospatial technology for the energy industry.  I was quite amazed at the number of areas where geospatial technology plays an important, often critical role in the energy sector.  I am including a few highlights here.  The full article can be found in the January 2013 edition of Geospatial World Magazine.

Geospatial technology for the energy industry

Energy demand will increase by over one‐third between now and 2035.   A massive investment of some $37 trillion in the world's energy supply system is needed during 2012‐2035.  Environmental issues have become a major concern in the energy industry.  It is projected that energy‐related CO2 emissions will rise from an estimated 31.2 Gt in 2011 to 37.0 Gt in 2035, leading to a long‐term average temperature increase at the Earth's surface of 3.6 °C.  Just to reduce the estimated long‐term average temperature increase to 3 °C requires a significant investment in energy efficiency leading to energy intensity improvements 2.6 times the rate of the last 25 years.

Some examples where geospatial technology plays an important role in the energy sector ithat I discuss in the article nclude transmission line route routing; energy density analysis to target buildings with high energy footprints; energy performance optimization of buildings; vegetation management for transmission lines; estimating solar potential and optimizing PV panel positioning; reducing utility truck rolls by "bringing the field into the office", disaster management; and increasing the value of enterprise systems  such as outage management, asset management, and work crew dispatch by integrating geospatial technology..

Energy efficiency of buildings

Residential, commercial, and public buildings account for one-third of the globe's total final energy consumption, but 80% of the energy efficiency potential of buildings remains untapped.  As a result improving the energy efficiency of buildings, both existing and new structures, has become a global priority for governments and power utilities.

A classic example of the application of geospatial techology in the energy sector is energy density analysis and mapping that helps utilities target  energy conservation and demand response programs to high energy footprint buildings. [Image courtesy of Horiizon Utilities]

Energy performance analysis helps architects and engineers to optimize energy usage of new buildings, often motivated by programs such as LEED certification and energy conservation  programs sponsored by electricity distribution companies.  Combining detailed information about a building in the form of a building information models (BIM) together with geopatial information enables energy performance analyses of alternative design options that can reduce annual energy consumption and power bills by 40%.  In some jurisdictions, programs supported by the local electric power utility means that reducing the expected electric power usage of a new building can generate an immediate financial benefit. [Image courtesy of 3D Energy Ltd].

Smart grid management system for operations and analytics

The volume of data generated by smart grid networks has been estimated to be 10,000 times greater than for our existing electrical networks, and much of the data is real-time.  Managing large volumes  of real-time data from sensors is simplified by integration with with geospatial technology that allows real-time monitoring and decision making.  For example, it can provide useful outage information to the public in a way that protects the privacy of individual consumers as in this example when Hurricane Sandy caused outages in Toronto.  [Image courtesy of Burlington Hydro]

Improving the energy-efficiency of buildings in the U.S.

The Department of Energy's (DoE) Quadrennial Technology Review 2011 has some very interesting statistics about energy use by buildings and DoE's priorities in meeting the Adminstration's goal of improving the energy efficiency of commercial and residential buildings by 20% within a decade.

The energy productivity of the United States has increased by more than 85% during the paat three decades. Energy productivity, often called energy intensity, is the gross domestic product divided by the total energy consumed and is a measure of how much energy is required to produce a dollar of GDP. Developong countries like China, whose per capita emissions are much less than the U.S., prefer energy intensity as a measure of their contribution to emissions reduction.

In the U.S. 40% of primary energy consumption and 72% of electricity is used by commercial and residential buildings. HVAC, lighting, water heating, and electronics account for about three-fourths of primary energy demand for buildings. Energy usage in commercial buildings is dominated by lighting. In residentail buildings most of the energy is used for heating. Electricity accounts for 40% and 53% of site energy use in residential and commercial buildings, respectively. Fuels for heating and cooking account for 60% and 47% of energy usage in residential and commercial buildings.

Approximately 60% of the commercial floor space and 75% of the homes that will be occupied in 2030 have already been built.

Department of Energy priorities

Many of the cost-effective energy efficiency measures available today for buildings and industry are not implemented because non-technological barriers, such as split incentives, inhibit their deployment.. It is estimated that technologies already available or soon to be available could reduce building-related energy consumption by 25% to 45%.  It has been deomnstrated that an integrated approach to building design, construction and operation can cost-effectively yield energy savings exceeding 50% in new builds.

For existing buildings energy savings of more than 40% savings have been demonstrated in retrofits in a variety of climates, including more than 20% savings over the current minimum (building code) requirement. 

According to DoE key enablers for deploying these technologies include

• calibrated data through distributed sensors
• validated modeling
• real-time control of a building’s components and their interactions with the electrical grid.

Making existing buildings more energy-efficient in Ottawa

Last Friday the Ottawa Region Chapter of the Canada Green Building Council and  the City of Ottawa organized a Leadership Forum on “Greening the Capital's Existing Buildings."

This was an extremely worthwhile event because it brought together representatives from some of Ottawa's major private building owners and operators and real estate companies including Bentall Kennedy, Halsall Associates, Brookfield Office Properties, BLJC, Minto, Cushman and Wakefield, Ottawa Community Housing, the local electric distribution company Ottawa Hydro, University of Ottawa and the City of Ottawa all of whom have made energy conservation a major priority.

The new Empire State Building, an icon for greening existing buildings

The model for what can be done to improve the environmental footprint for existing buildings is the newly renovated and energy-efficient Empire State Building.  Speaker after speaker referred to the retrofit of the Empire State Building in New York City, where green retrofits and renovations that earned the building LEED Gold certification have saved more than $4.4 million annually in operations costs, reduced energy use by 38 percent, and cut carbon emissions by 105,000 metric tons over a 15-year period.  This was achieved at an incremental cost of about $0.25 per square foot with a payback period of slightly more than three years.

Several speakers made the case that when all factors are included,  the greenest building is the one that has already been built.  As the Empire State Building experience shows, it is possible to significantly improve energy performance of the existing buildings.

Ottawa's building portfolio

Ottawa has 675 buildings of which 260 have not been renovated in the past 25 years.  About 32% of the competiive market in Ottawa are BOMA BESt or LEED certified buildings in the Ottawa's downtown core including the first LEED EBOM (Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance) certified building in Ottawa, the  World Exchange Plaza owned by Bentall Kennedy.

The environmental context

According to the U.S. Green  Building Council in the U.S. buildings are responsible for 41% of energy consumption, 38% of all CO2 emissions and 73% of  electricity consumption.  Motivated by similar statistics in other parts of the globe governments around the world, especially the European Union, have targeted buildings for energy conservations measures. 

Compared to the average commercial building, a comparable LEED Gold building in the U.S. General Services Administration’s portfolio consumes 25% less energy and 11% less water, has 19% lower maintenance costs; 27% higher occupant satisfaction; and 34% lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The market imperative for owners and tenants

In the US there are 32,000 registered LEED buildings of which 12,000 have been certified.  As of June 2012 that comes to about 2 billion sq ft of office space.  According to the US Green Building Council 193,750 sq ft of commercial floor space is being LEED certified every day. 

In Ottawa the number of LEED certified buildings has increased by 375% in the past two years.   According to James Neil of Cushman and Wakefield LEED or BOMA BESt certification is now mandatory for major new buildings in the downtown core.  This is driven by the Federal Government which requires all new Federally owned buildings to be at least LEED Gold certified.   And this policy has now been made mandatory for Federally leased buildings as well. 

In addition Canadian and international companies like the Royal Bank of Canada, Microsoft or Autodesk who have made sustainability a priority in the market place will only lease in LEED or BOMA BESt certified buildings, because these companies have made sustainability part of their public presence and need to be seen as walking the talk.  James Neil foresees that the number of certified buildings will increase significantly in the next 12-16 months as  the result of a “flight to quality”.  Class A building owners will do it because certification protects their investment.  Tenants will demand it because it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to be seen to environmentally aware.

One of the sessions focused on how tenant demands and owner leadership are driving investment in energy efficiency.  Bentall Kennedy conducts a biennial survey of the tenants in its buildings.  In the most recent survey 80% of respondents cited one or more sustainability factors as important reasons for leasing from Bentall-Kennedy.  The factors they cited most frequently were indoor air quality, waste recycling and energy efficiency. 

Probably the most interesting results from the last two Bentall Kennedy tenant surveys in 2007/2008 and 2010 are a significant increase in the proportion of tenants who have implemented sustainability practices or who have a corporate sustainability policy.

Tenants whose companies have a corporate sustainability policy

• 2007/8 29%
• 2010 48%

Tenants who companies that implemented sustainability practices in the workplace

• 2007/8 41%
• 2010 63%

The Bentall Kennedy survey also asked tenants whether sustainability was important enough that they would pay a premium.  About 14 % responded that they would expect to pay a premium for sustainability options when deciding where to locate.  According to Bentall Kennedy their biennial surveys show that the proportion of tenants who expect to pay a premium for sustainability is increasing.

Benefits of energy efficiency

Many of the speakers talked about various measures they have done to improve the energy performance of their building including florescent and LED lighting, boiler replacement, water conservation, variable frequency drives (VFD) on chillers, and managing outside air brought into the building.  Benefits were usually expressed as the investment required to achieve a certain level of energy savings and the payback period required to recoup the investment.  For example, an owner of a major downtown building invested $670,000 in energy conservation improvements that resulted in 18% energy savings annually with a payback of 3.9 years.

In the past the reason that energy efficiency was not every tenant's or building owner's top priority was explained by Shawn Carr of Halsall Associates.  Typical tenant expenditures on human resources, facilities, and energy are in the ratio 300, 30 and 3.  In other words tenants typically spend 100 times as much on staff as on energy, and 20 times as much on facilities as on energy.  But environmental awareness is driving growing interest in energy because firms are finding that typically 40-60% of their carbon footprint is attributable to energy consumption.   The other major motivator for energy efficiency are the increasingly hard numbers about the softer benefits of going green.  Increasingly owners are looking for other benefits in addition to the hard numbers of energy savings.  From an owner's perspective, changes that improve tenant satisfaction result in higher occupancy rates and other financial benefits.

The general feeling about the future of green investments at this forum mirrored a recent McGraw-Hill Construction report basd on a qualitative survey of education, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and federal government sectors about decision making for green building investments.  The report makes the case that for energy efficiency in building to grow at a rate comparable to the past decade,  more far-reaching benefits often referred to as the "triple bottom line" need to be examined and supported with hard statistics.  The triple bottom line includes not just financial benefits such as savings in energy, water, waste and lowered operating costs, which has been the primary motivation to date, but also environmental and social benefits.  Most respondents reported that there is a need for more data about the non-financial benefits of green to encourage to encourage greater investment in green building.  Respondents also indicated a need for standardized measures that can capture the impact of green building across the triple bottom line.

According to McGraw-Hill Construction financial benefits represent  "only a fraction of the advantages offered by green buildings—missing is a quantification of the full triple bottom line benefits from these investments, especially around the social benefits to human performance and well-being."  To achieve this the McGraw-Hill study recommends evaluating social, environmental and financial goals together when making decisions on green building investments; creating green building benchmarks through standardization and disclosure of operational building costs; compiling data and case studies that establish the value of nonfinancial benefits of green building;  better tools using a more thorough, industry-consensus definition of lifecycle costing based on impacts across the triple bottom line; and assembling a public database of green project measures across the triple bottom line.

Several speakers at the conference in Otttawa made the case for the importance of an integrated design approach that encouraged collaboration between different teams of specialists with the objective of whole building ecology.

EcoDistricts

A number of cities are going beyond improving the perfromance of single buildings and are looking at optimizing sustainability golas for a larger urban area referred to as an EcoDistrict.  It seeks a broad commitment to accelerate neighborhood-scale sustainability.  Portland, Oregon is a leader in this initiative.  An EcoDistrict initiative has also been proposed for Ottawa's downtown core with the objective of leveraging existing assets to achieve more ambitious sustainability performance goals; attract investment and community action; and track results.

Water conservation

One representative of an owner that owns one of the highest profile office buildings in downtown Ottawa also mentioned the importance of water and water conservation.  In their case 25% of their water consumption is used by their cooling towers which they submeter so they can monitor water consumption on a daily basis.  A number of speakers mentioned the simple problem of leaking toilets each of which can add hundreds of dollars to the monthly water bill.

As-builts

I was a little surprised that only one speaker, Robin Hutcheson of Arborus Consulting, mentioned the importance of having reliable as-builts as being essential to building owners.  Though once Robin brought the topic up other speakers agreed that they were of critical importance.  More than one speaker also identified as-builts as a problem because of their uncertain reliability.  Two problems were mentioned as contributing to the problem.  Uncertainty about what was delivered in the first place, an "as-constructed" or an "as-designed".  Another problem is that drawings are often not updated when renovations or other changes were made.  One building owner said he had to manage 5,000 CAD drawings that comprised his building's as-builts and keeping them up-to-date with renovations was a challenge.

Electricity conservation as a major motivator for greening existing building

One of the important initiatives that contributes to the greening of existing buildings in Ottawa are several Ontario Power Authority (OPA) programs that Ottawa Hydro has been particularly active in promoting.  The OPA is responsoble for the very successful High Performnace New Construction program that will pay for energy modeling and analysis for new buildings and will pay $400-$800 for every kW saved over code.  

Ottawa Hydro also offers OPA programs focused on existing buildings.  These include subsidies for energy audits, retrofit programs, chilled water system assessment and retrofit, energy management and monitoring systems, demand response and small business lighting.  These programs have been so successful that, for example, low efficiency chillers are no longer stocked in the Ottawa region by major suppliers.

Automation

New technologies can dramatically change energy usage in buildigs.  Several owners mentioned the benefits of building automation systems that not only allow continuous real-time monitoring of building performance, but also to automatically change building parameters.   For example, it is now possible to automatically monitor CO2 based on ASHRAE 62 guidelines and control how much and when outside air is brought into the building.  In one example, managing outside air reduced natural gas consumption by 40% and electric power usage by 12-15%.

Split incentive

A number of speakers and members of the audience brought up the challenge of  “split incentives”.  A recent survey published by the Institute for Building Efficiency found that one of major inhibitors to reducing energy demand in buildings is the institutional conflict between landlords and tenants  resulting from “split incentives”.

Commercial leases usually make the building owner responsible for covering the cost for all capital upgrades while energy costs and day-to-day operating expenses are paid by the tenants.  The problem that arises is that the owner is responsible for spending the money to improve the energy efficiency of the building while the the tenant is the sole beneficiary of reduced operating expenses.  (An argument that is sometimes made is that there is an indirect benefit to the owner in the increased market competitiveness of the owner's office space.)

The problem of providing a direct incentive to both the owner and the tenant is solvable though.  The Empire State Building is often cited as an example of a leased building that succeeded with its energy retrofit because of tenant participation.  In this case the energy efficiency retrofits were successfully implemented because the building owner, manager, and tenants worked together as partners in the project with a shared sustainability goal for the building”.  So-called “green leases” can also be part of the solution.  Green leases share the costs of energy efficiency projects between the owner and the tenant.

An interesting financial vehicle used often by government to transfer the risk of green projects to the private sector is the energy performance contract.  This type of contract specifies that the private contractor is allocated a certain percentage of the energy savings realized by a project.

State of the art: Energy performance modeling for buildings

Yesterday the Ottawa Chapter of the Canadian Green Building Council sponsored a presentation "Building Green in a Collaborative Virtual Environment" by Jean Carriere of 3DEnergy, Ltd.

Where we are now

Jean gave an overview of the state of the art for energy performance modeling for new buildings.  To summarize, there are a lot of energy analysis tools (lighting, thermal, emissions, water usage, etc) , many are very complex, and the volumes of data that are required is increasing exponentially. Interoperablity is one of the biggest major challenges that is inhibiting productivity in energy performance analysis.

Energy performance modeling is a new field, so new that there is no set of standard best practices.  Energy modelers are making it up as they go.

Another important factor inhibiting the full benefit of energy modeling is that it is rarely used in the conceptial design phase of a building project when its impact would be most significant.  In Jean's experience he is called in after the architect has completed the basic design, during the design development and construction documentation phases.   This late in the game there are severe limits on what can be changed to optimize building energy performance.

One of the most, if not the most important, motivations for conducting an energy analysis for a new building in Ontario are programs run by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) that provide direct payments not ony for reducing the energy load of a building but also for the energy analysis itself. The program that Jean cites most often is the High Performance New Buildings (HPNC) program that pays $400 to $800 to the builder for every kW of electric power saved over what is mandated by the Ontario Building Code (ASHRAE 90.1 2010).   Regulation is also starting to be an important factor as well.  In Ontario there is a new regulation that requires that any building with 40% or more glazing has to be 5% more efficient than ASHRAE 90.1.

Trends

There are important trends that are emerging that point to where the industry is headed.

BIM

First of all, from Jean's perspective the natural place to start energy modeling is with a Building Information Model (BIM).  There are several reasons for this.  First of all it is what many of the energy performance analysis packages expect and it is supported by the gbXML standard.  Secondly it allows all the information required by the architect, engineers and construction contractors to be accessed in one place.  And thirdly it helps in communicating the results of the energy performance analysis to the people who need it including heating and cooling, lighting and other types of engineers, all  of whom may require the same  information but communicated in dfferent ways.

Interoperability standards

From Jean's perspective the big challenge is getting the right information stored in the BIM model into the energy performance analysis package.  Jean sees interoperability as having the biggest productivity impact on the energy analysis process.  Jean has put a lot of effort into streamling the flow of building properties from the BIM model to the energy analysis package.  He relies on the gbXML open schema to transfer building properties stored in the BIM model to engineering analysis tools.

Jean has focussed particularly on hospitals and reports that after working on several hospitals he has optimized the process so that starting from paper architectural drawings, he can develop the BIM model, compile energy performance parameters, generate gbXML, and conduct a complete energy analysis (daylighting, thermal analysis, etc)  for the proposed building in only two weeks.  People in the audience were astounded at how quickly Jean is able to do this.  One person cited several months as their typical experience in doing an energy analysis of a building design. 

Getting the biggest bang for the buck

Jean showed a fascinating graph that compared the energy reduction impact of various strategies.  I and a few others were surprised that daylighting, reducing the need for electric lighting, is one if the easiest strategies to implement and is one of the most effective way to reduce energy usage by a building.   

Training and education

One of the challenges that has to be addressed, and that educational programs like this one organzed by the CaGBC, is making everyone involved in construction, but especially those involved in the early conceptual design phase, more aware of energy modeling.  Currently on many design/build projects, one group does the conceptual design, which is then handed over to a second delivery group that developes the schematic design and builds the building (and often leaves detailed design to the construction contractors.)  Jean rarely gets a chance to work with the conceptual design group, who are often not that conversant with energy performance of buildings and the important implications some of their design decisions have for the energy performance of the finished building.  By the time the delivery group calls Jean in to conduct an energy analysis, design decisions that could have dramatically changed the energy profile of the building have already been made and at that point are cast in stone.

 Future

The future is net zero energy buildings.  I have blogged about the mandated objectives for near zero energy buildings in the EU, the emerging objectives for zero emissions buildings in Japan, and the Federal objectives for net zero energy buildings in the U.S.  Buildings that either use net zero energy or even contribute more energy back to the grid than they consume are clearly the future.  But getting there will require changes in how we design and build. 

First of all, from Jean's perspective energy analysis has to happen earlier in the design/build cycle.  Secondly, it will require much more collaboration than is typical of the overwhelming majority of construction projects.  Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) where everyone involved in a project work in the same big room is an example of the type of collaborative approach to construction projects that could enable much greater energy savings.

Some of the things that are on Jean's radar as we move toward net zero energy buildings are ASHRAE 189.1 a standard for the design of high-performance green buildings, standard building energy modeling procedures and guidelines (COMNET), and the zero energy performance index (zEPI), which is the ratio of the energy performance of a building to the average energy consumption of a similar building at the turn of the millennium that is operated in a similar climate, for similar hours of and similar operating conditions.