In discussing the Passive House standard, we learned that there are probably as many as 25,000 Passive House structures all around the world, the majority of which are in Europe, and only a handful of which are in North America.  One of these buildings is the Smith House in Urbana, Illinois, the first Passive House built in the U.S. in 2003 by Katrin Klingenberg, who literally wrote the book on Passive House.  Another Passive House is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Solar Decathlon house from 2009, also known as the Gable Home.  This house came in second in the 2009 Decathlon to Team Germany, who won their second Decathlon in a row.  We took this opportunity to talk about the technology and building science on display at the Solar Decathlon, and how great an event this is for green home designers and enthusiasts alike.  You can see more photos and read about my thoughts from immediately after the last event here.

from the Solar Decathlon 2009

Finally we got to the issue of our field trip this week to the Everhart Passive House in SE Portland.  The Everhart family has put a lot of time and effort into the retrofit of their house into a Passive House, and they are extremely generous for opening their home to our class.  For Assignment #5, we’ll be modeling the Everhart home using the Recurve modeling tool. Students are encouraged to bring a tape measure and their sketchbooks, and to “divide and conquer” spaces in the home to find inputs for all the rooms in the most efficient way possible.  See you at 10:30 on Thursday morning!

1. The oil leak that is destroying the Gulf of Mexico. Duh.
2. The likelihood of a major earthquake striking the Pacific Northwest in my lifetime. Let’s be honest:  I love my new adopted city, and I’m not leaving anytime soon.  But I am also probably not going to buy a brick or stucco house in this city, not unless it’s been seismically reinforced, or one story (but what’s the fun in that?).  The last time a major earthquake struck here was in 1700, and obviously the city was mostly settled after that, so many modern buildings were built in the absence of a strong seismic code.  And the chances of a big one hitting are pretty high.  Like, 4 in 10 high.  D’oh!
3. Jevons paradox and Khazzoom-Brookes postulate. Before you get all excited that I’m using strange, big words that you’ve never seen before, check out the Wikipedia articles that I linked to and then come back.  You’ll see that the two concepts are very similar in nature, and that they both allude to one thing: the idea that the more we increase efficiency of technology or energy, the more we consume as a society.   So you can imagine, then, why this might keep me up at night… I work for an energy efficiency company!  Our whole job is to increase the efficiency of buildings and help you save energy, and therefore money.  But I can’t help you save money if – as these concepts state – you end up increasing your consumption because you are saving money.  So, I will beg of you this:  do not become a statistic!  Don’t succumb to these concepts!  Please let me help you save money!
4. And finally, Hovershark.  I mean, seriously.  What the heck is this?!?  Are they evolving that quickly?!  I only live an hour and a half from the ocean, can they hover that far?!?  :)

image courtesy of www.warrenellis.com

I’ll try to write more when I’ve had some time to process, as well as when I have a full keyboard to write on. In the meantime enjoy my iPhone’s photo of Seattle scenery.

Well, that may soon change, at least a little bit.  Enter the HOME STAR Jobs Bill.   HOME STAR provides two paths for consumers to save energy in their homes (from their Web site):

1. The Silver Star prescriptive path provides a near-term incentive for specific energy saving investments that is simple to administer and easily introduced into the existing marketplace. Homeowners receive between $1,000 and $1,500 for each measure installed in the home, or $250 per appliance, with a benefit not exceeding $3,000 or at least 50% of total project costs (whichever is less). Covered measures include air sealing; attic, wall, and crawl space insulation; duct sealing or replacement; and replacement of existing windows and doors, furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps, water heaters and appliances with high-efficiency models. The legislation will utilize existing standards for qualifying products at a level sufficient to significantly increase consumer demand for highly energy efficient building materials and mechanical systems.  SILVER STAR improvements may be implemented by any appropriately licensed and insured contractor, but all participating contractors will receive information about opportunities for accreditation and training programs.
2. The Gold Star performance path offers an incentive to households that choose to conduct a comprehensive energy audit and then implement a variety of measures that are designed together to provide greater total returns in energy savings. This performance path represents the future of home efficiency: state-of-the-art building science is used to identify problems, present solutions and deliver verifiable energy savings, generating confidence among homeowners and investors alike. This technology-neutral approach is based on performance, not specific products, so market forces will direct funds to solutions that achieve the best results. A certified professional with accreditation from the Building Performance Institute (BPI), the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) or an approved equivalent conducts an energy audit before work begins, and a test-out when the performance retrofit is complete. Consumers receive $3,000 for modeled savings of 20%, plus an additional $1,500 incentive for each additional 5% of modeled energy savings, with incentives not to exceed 50% of project costs. Contractors implementing the GOLD STAR performance path must be BPI accredited.

What this means is that, essentially, if this legislation passes, millions of people will very quickly have several options available to them by which they can implement energy-saving measures in their homes by actions as simple as upgrading appliances or by doing an all-out renovation.  The bill primarily hopes to quickly create as many jobs as possible, while providing energy efficiency on a massive scale, which not only will ease the burden on our aging energy infrastructure, it will ultimately reduce carbon emissions.  (Both of which, incidentally, were the goals when I started this Web site.)  Additionally, anyone wishing to implement these measures will have financing options available to them that are guaranteed through the provisions of the bill.

Pretty neat, eh? Now we just need to hope that the legislation gets passed! If you’d like to learn more about HOME STAR, visit their Web site here.  If you’d like to join the coalition supporting it, visit the Efficiency First Web site to sign up and find out how you can contact your legislators to voice your support.  Even if you don’t own your own home or aren’t in a position to change your living situation to make it more efficient, I think we can all agree that adding a couple hundred thousand jobs during a recession to a very depressed construction market is a good idea, and making several million homes more efficient is an even better idea.   So CHECK IT OUT!!!

First of all, you may want to know what a “home energy rating” consists of.  The funny thing is, there’s actually LOTS of home energy ratings.  There’s the HERS, which is given by ResNet, which is the group hosting the conference I’m attending this week; there’s a BPI rating; there’s the ENERGY STAR designation; there’s the LEED for Homes; there’s the NAHB Green Home Standard; and I’m pretty sure there’s a few that I’m forgetting.

An example of a HERS score: image courtesy of ResNet

Each of these rating systems use a set of standards that are either administered during the construction or remodeling of the home, or they are checked after the home is completed.  To adhere to these strict standards, your home needs to have properly installed insulation, tight construction (so that your home doesn’t leak too much air),  an air/moisture barrier (again with the leakage), properly sealed ducts, and it wouldn’t hurt to have good windows, weatherstripping, very efficient HVAC equipment, and … basically your home should be a well-constructed, high-performance house.

I would regale you with the details of the various sessions that I’ve been attending but I can almost guarantee that you would get bored and fall asleep reading.  I’ve been having a hard time staying awake myself, which I attribute to the warmth of the rooms and the fact that I’m operating three hours ahead of my home time zone.  Nevertheless, it’s an incredibly informative conference and I’m getting to meet a lot of very knowledgeable people who are working to help homeowners save energy.

Now, back to watching the Olympics! 

What do you see?  Do you see a happy polar bear, playing with a butterfly?

Perhaps he’s taking a nap next to his “friends”, the baby seal and the baby polar bear…

Or, maybe you see a polar bear that’s running… you see, the sun came out and it started to melt the ice underneath the polar bear’s feet.  He needs to get somewhere, and fast!

What these animations are depicting, if you were perceptive enough to figure out from the dashboard on the left-hand side of the page, is real-time energy usage on the campus of Dartmouth University.  Unlike many other institutions, which have mandated efficiency programs and/or building goals that were set by the university or the government, Dartmouth sought to reduce energy consumption in their dorms – solely through behavioral changes – by 15%.  From their Web site:

Launched on April 24, 2008, the goal of the program is to change behavior by providing energy information in meaningful and compelling ways. … We encourage students to change the way they use energy in their daily lives by monitoring and displaying information about the resources students have control over, such as plug loads for electricity, heat and water use. We hope to help students understand the larger impacts of their actions and develop tools and approaches to energy conservation that can carry over into their everyday lives.

This program at Dartmouth is innovative, educational, interactive, and fun.  It’s also an example of a hybrid energy efficiency system that exists in very few places in the United States – it’s a behavior modification program that relies on a building monitoring system for real-time data.  The polar bear reacts to the energy load on the building at any given time, and the students can therefore react to the amount of energy they are using immediately.  And it’s not presented in a boring way, either … it’s an animation of a polar bear that lives a happy life or dies based on the energy consumption by the students at Dartmouth.

And by all accounts, it’s been a great success.

This is a good example of an innovative system that buildings might want to employ in the future to encourage occupants to save energy.  The polar bear may not work in all circles, but I, for one, do not want to see any majestic animals suffer because of climate change, so this would have worked on me like a charm.

Kudos to the students at Dartmouth for thinking outside the box to achieve massive energy savings on their campus!

• a 20 percent mandatory reduction in indoor water use, with voluntary goal standards for 30, 35 and 40 percent reductions;
• Separate water meters for nonresidential buildings’ indoor and outdoor water use, with a requirement for moisture-sensing irrigation systems for larger landscape projects;
• Requiring diversion of 50 percent of construction waste from landfills, increasing voluntarily to 65 and 75 percent for new homes and 80 percent for commercial projects;
• Mandatory inspections of energy systems (i.e. heat furnace, air conditioner, mechanical equipment) for nonresidential buildings over 10,000 square feet to ensure that all are working at their maximum capacity according to their design efficiencies;
• Requiring low-pollutant emitting interior finish materials such as paints, carpet, vinyl flooring and particle board.

All of this and more information about CALGREEN can be found here.

So what does this mean for the average homeowner?  Well, if you live in California, you may start to see the changes immediately, especially if you are building or planning on buying a house in the next few years, as this new code will affect all new buildings.  Although on the other hand, the changes may not be as noticeable, since California has been at the forefront of energy efficient design for many years, so this code is more like an incremental step rather than a big jump.

Even gas stations in California are designed sustainably: The LEED Certified BP Helios House in LA

Now, if you don’t live in California, you should still pay attention, because you may not be off the hook:  the CALGREEN is the first green building standard in the nation, but it won’t be the last.  There are many states that are not too far behind California in discussing adjustments to their state building codes to make buildings more energy efficient, and those changes to the code might be coming as soon as this year.  States like New York, Minnesota, Florida and Colorado are no strangers to green building guidelines, while Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington have energy efficiency programs in place already.  California has many challenges facing it right now – its crazy budget problems, its constitution, and various other calamities notwithstanding – but it has always been good at leading the pack with regards to energy efficiency.  The CALGREEN program will test the system, and if it works, it will be a great model for the rest of the country.

Of course, you could just get ahead of the curve and start greening your own home without any codes or lawmakers telling you to do so… 

Take, for example, the news that the first net-zero neighborhood in the United States is being built in Boulder. At just 12 homes, it will be a tiny neighborhood, yes, but a photovoltaic-powered assemblage of LEED Platinum homes nonetheless.

Image courtesy of Inhabitat

Also, today I learned from one of the DOE’s daily updates that the U.S.  Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs is committed to being the first institution of its kind to reach net-zero energy use, by purchasing or producing as much renewable energy as it consumes.   The Air Force is actually leading the government charge on energy innovation, and according to the DOE,

“The Air Force currently uses more green power — 426.2 million kilowatt hours (kWh) annually — than any other branch of government, over a third more than the second-place Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and twice as much as third-place DOE.”

Very impressive!  The Air Force has also collectively added several “green stripes” to its uniform (wait, do the Air Force get stripes on their uniform?  I think so?) with several EPA and DOE Green Power awards, including:

• 2003: Green Power Partner of the Year;
• 2004: Green Power Leadership Award;
• 2005: Green Power Partner of the Year;
• 2008: Green Power Leadership Award.

Building improvements at the Air Force Academy will focus on the 6.4 million sf of space already in use, with high efficiency mechanical, electrical and HVAC equipment; security and energy efficiency upgrades to window wall systems; improved building insulation; utilization of natural lighting; and energy-focused roofing replacements.   The goal in making these improvements is to have all its buildings reach or exceed the USGBC’s LEED Gold standard.

And NO, I’m not finished yet.  As IF that weren’t enough, the Air Force’s leadership on renewable energy has led Colorado’s elected officials, military and energy leaders to create the Front Range Renewable Energy Consortium (FRREC) to “collaboratively develop and utilize the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency resources”.  This new consortium includes:

• Department of Defense and military (Air Force, Army, Colorado National Guard);
• DOE and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory;
• Governor’s Energy Office;
• USNORTHCOM/NORAD;
• Xcel Energy;
• Tri-State Generation;
• Colorado Springs utilities.

That list above doesn’t even mention the Air Force Academy’s Army neighbor, Fort Carson, which is ALSO now marching towards net-zero energy status and hopes to reach this goal by 2015.

Whew!  That’s a heck of a lot of bullet points, and a heck of a lot less energy consumption.  Massachusetts, New York, and Wisconsin, you have an answer to this?  California, Oregon and Washington?  …Your move!  Colorado might soon be renamed “The Net-Zero State”…

The ultimate goal of the AIA, and of all proponents of green building, is to see a day where “building green” no longer exists, and green design is integrated into all buildings.

Hear hear, AIA.   Thanks for writing that.  Now if we could only get more architects to live it, we’d be in better shape…

Nationally, the AIA has adopted the Architecture 2030 Challenge and is committed to developing and promoting the means to reach at least a 50% carbon emission reduction by 2010 and carbon neutral buildings by 2030.  As stated in the AIA SustAIAnability 2030 program, “This exciting challenge offers many opportunities for integrated, high-performance, environmentally-conscious buildings that will become valued assets for future generations.”

So, from my perspective this is pretty much awesome. Because it means that it’s getting the best designers in the city to recognize that in order to have a really great building, you need to have a great design AND be environmentally sound as well.  And AIA Portland is helping out, by providing all applicants for the awards with the following 2009 Carbon Calculator.  It’s a simple Excel spreadsheet that requires a few inputs to yield your building’s percentage of carbon emissions, which compare to baseline numbers that you determine by filling out the Energy Star Target Finder.  It may seem like a lot of numbers but frankly designers need to become more familiar with these processes… finding your building’s carbon emissions, and then figuring out how to reduce them, is going to be absolutely key if we are going to fight global warming!