One of the most important things to keep in context within the framework of this class is, how does this standard relate to the other systems, standards, and methodologies we’ve seen?  Observe:

• ENERGY STAR:  This government-sponsored system is used widely by building professionals and manufacturers.  But, it is somewhat unwieldy with lots of checklists and tools and has been rejected in multiple jurisdictions for being too complicated.
• State programs and codes: There are too many of these to mention, and they range from prescriptive to performance, regulations to codes.  Standards vary from place to place and can be quite helpful in certain areas – if you know how to take advantage of them.
• Architecture 2030:  This organization sets ambitious goals but provides very little framework for how to get there.
• LEED:  This large and dense standard has achieved what we might call “market transformation” due to its position as THE green building benchmark.  But, to achieve certification you must wade through mounds of paperwork and fork out lots of money.
• Passive House:  This simple and straightforward standard places a premium on high performance, but is perhaps not as comprehensive as some of the other systems.

In contrast, the Living Building Challenge asks the question, “what if every single act of design and construction made the world a better place?”.  With the LBC, the ideal outcome IS the goal, and there are no choices about whether or not you follow the “imperatives”.  If you are trying to reach Living status, you either “go big or go home”.

This brings me to our field trip last week, the last one of the quarter… we are so fortunate in Portland to live in a community that places such value on sustainable living.  We have not just one but THREE Living Buildings in the works in the city of Portland!   The Oregon Sustainability Center, when it is built, will likely be the greenest high-rise ever built and reassert Portland’s status as a global leader in the green design community.  The Key Delta Living Building in North Portland will be a phenomenal resource to its community once it is fully transformed from the gas station it used to be.  But, as great as those buildings will be, they are not built yet.

The Living Building that IS built, or I should say nearly finished, is the commons, a two-family home in SE Portland that is a labor of love for the brothers building it.  Sticking to the integrity of the Living Building Challenge has been a – dare I say – challenge for the owners, but they have come a long way and will have one of the greenest houses in the land when they are done.  We had a good time on this field trip, and even took a class picture!

One of the most common questions I heard from the students during the midterms was, “What are your expectations for us to come up with the right answer?” To which I say, this project and this class are not so much about getting THE right answer THE first time around,  as it is about getting AN answer.  The purpose of the term project is in fact to come up with multiple answers and then compare them with historical data to see how that building stacks up.  Energy modeling tools are imperfect creations… no single entity has a lock on how to calculate the energy consumption of even the smallest home, let alone a large commercial building.  So often, to paint a more accurate picture of a building’s energy consumption, we use multiple tools and then parse out what worked and what didn’t work.  The good news is, working with multiple tools not only gives us results that we can compare, it also offers the students the opportunity to gain experience on programs they may have never had the chance to use before.

And so it came to pass that we had a mid-term review in an architecture school in which everyone was encouraged to keep experimenting and make mistakes! Which in eQUEST is very easy to do  :)   I am really pleased so far with the class’s investment in this project and happy to see the gears turning in their heads, especially since so many engineers and other building professionals think that architects “don’t care” about the systems and the energy consumption of the buildings that they design.  Architects care, for sure, it’s just that often we aren’t given the means to understand and work with this information.  Hopefully this class is a small but serious step on the road to changing that.

This discussion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions seemed like an appropriate time to talk about how they are calculated.  Many of the tools and programs we are looking at in this class focus on energy consumption, but very few give outputs for GHG emissions.  If someone wants to calculate these emissions, an understanding of how variable GHG emissions are is necessary.  Following is a chart that gives rough averages for pounds of CO2 for each unit of energy measurement.

We talked a lot about tools and online resources that can calculate the estimated PV load for a building, once the energy consumption has been calculated.  Students will likely find a lot of help in these tools for their Term Project requirements.

Finally we talked about the Field Trip, which is a tour on Thursday morning of the PECI offices at Portland’s very new First & Main building. Assignment #3 is to use the spreadsheet analysis tool to try to come up with “Level 1″ outputs. Some inputs students will be able to find on their own throughout the space, but some will not be obvious and will be given at the time of the field trip.  This should also serve as a reminder that students wishing to receive input on their mid-terms from REAL energy modeling professionals will have a chance to do so during the field trip!

• 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… 

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…

The good news is, in the meantime, I’ve been able to upload and catalogue all of my photos from the event and add some commentary as well.  Feel free to check out my Solar Decathlon collection on Flickr, where each house has its own set of photos and my corresponding thoughts written alongside.  Note the overwhelming gray clouds in all of the pictures – made for some pretty gloomy photography :-/

Wow, that sky is ugly

I will now wax poetic on my favorite house in the Solar Decathlon, since I haven’t done it yet.   I want to talk for a moment about Virginia Tech’s Lumenhaus. This house was truly lovely, and I am at a loss to explain their 13th place finish.  I felt that this team used every sustainable system reasonably available to a residential customer to create a truly green, net-zero energy home.  And not only that, they did so without compromising on space – the interior of house was perfectly proportioned in its public versus private areas, with some extra special touches thrown in that really sealed the deal.  Case in point: the partitions in the bedroom that not only held your closet, but they separated to reveal a TV and in doing so, created a partition wall between the bedroom and the living space.

The rainwater collection system/awning over the front door

But I’m not going to stop there.  The exterior screens were cut steel and then bent by hand in a pattern that was meant to direct sunlight into the house but also maintain privacy.  The awning over the front door doubled as a rain scupper, and drained water into catchment basins under the house… which could be recycled in a closed-loop graywater system.  The skylight in the bathroom… the geothermal heating system in addition to the roof PV array… and if all this hotness weren’t enough, to move this house, all you needed to do was put it on a giant set of wheels and hitch it to the back of a tractor trailer, and you’re on your way!

Metal sunscreen and panel system as seen from the inside

I’m not the only one who thought the Lumenhaus was pretty great, however; the Virginia Tech team was approached by NBC during the Decathlon and the team is now in negotiations to move the house to Rockefeller Center so it can be on the Today Show, which may happen in mid-November.  Also, the team of bloggers at Inhabitat did a great write up of the house on their blog, which included some beautiful photos that I will now borrow to show you how nice the house is -  if only it had been sunny while I was visiting!

courtesy of Inhabitat

courtesy of Inhabitat

Everyone loves a section detail! courtesy of Inhabitat

Congrats to VT for such a job well done, and let’s hope they get some of their technology upgraded in time for the Solar Decathlon Europe competition next year – since they are the only team from the U.S. Solar Decathlon to compete overseas too!

courtesy of Inhabitat

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!

1. GE recently introduced a Net-Zero Energy Home, which uses a bunch of green gizmos to bring its net energy usage down to zero.  Among the gadgets employed are ground source heat pumps, photovoltaics, high efficiency appliances and battery storage.  Interesting, for the 10% extra cost of the house, an average homeowner could acheive a lot of energy savings with some simple design adjustments, but it might take a while for the average technology-addicted homeowner to warm up to that idea.  To get started, try greening your home.
2. Treehugger pointed out back in July that the U.S. has enough empty houses to hold all of Britain.  Holy homeless housing solution, Batman!
3. David Gottfried’s Sage House is almost off the LEED scale.  And it looks nice too.
4. Ooooh, let’s talk about manufactured housing in the U.S., and how we might not only put it to use during this economic downturn, but also how we can make it better.
5. Finally, TH takes a look at some new, smaller-footprint, green homes in Seattle, by none other than Dwell Development, LLC.

images courtesy Treehugger and Dwell Development, LLC

Which is why, in my most recent e-newsletter from Architecture 2030, I was pleased and not surprised to discover that they had spent so much time poring over the 1428-page Waxman-Markey climate bill in the House of Representatives.  I am going to take Ed’s word for it, as I do not have the energy (or enough caffeine) to read a 1428-page bill, when he tells me that the 29 most important pages of the bill are contained in Section 201, which requires updating national building energy codes to meet the following energy reduction targets:

• in 2010, 30% below the baseline energy code (IECC 2006 and ASHRAE 90.1-2004),
• in 2014-2015, 50% below the baseline energy code, and
• every three years after, out to 2029-2030, an additional 5% reduction.

Simply put, this is totally awesome. If designers and architects are going achieve lower energy buildings, we are going to need the building codes to be our guides, because our clients usually won’t pay for it on their own.  This is starting to change, certainly, but frankly there are not a whole lot of people in the building industry that are getting paid for anything right now.  This portion of the bill will not only regulate new construction, but it will encourage people who can’t afford new buildings to reconsider renovation as a viable option.  And both of these things NEED to happen:  new construction should be more energy efficient, while renovation should happen on a broader scale.  The GOOD NEWS is, clients, developers, and builders need to work openly with architects, designers and engineers to make this happen.  Which means, everybody gets back to work!

To read more about the awesomeness of energy efficiency in buildings and the implications of this climate bill, read the complete analysis (with fun graphs and everything) in Architecture 2030′s latest e-newsletter.

I am originally from Cincinnati and they had one as well, called Building Value.  Does your community have a building supply recycling center?  If so, post in the comments!