On a sunny day in July, I was happy to find myself in Boothbay, Maine for the grand opening of our most recent net-zero project, The Bosarge Family Education Center at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Heralded by the press as “The Greenest Building in Maine”, this educational center is the first net-zero commercial/institutional project to be completed in the state of Maine.

Image copyright of Robert Benson Photography

The grand opening ceremony provided an opportunity for those in Maine to collect over the idea of net-zero and high-performance building. With representative attending from all of Maine’s governmental branches, ample discussion moved towards the challenges of high-performance building and the goals achievable in building and energy policy in the future. It is my hope that these relatively small building can have a wide reaching audience and begin to change minds in Maine and New England about green building practices and the ability to build net-zero.

This unique project didn’t become a net-zero building by accident. From the very beginning the board at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens set out strict environmental goals for this project. Compared to many other projects, where Maclay Architects has spent time bringing the client and team on board with high-performance design practices, this project hit the ground running with goals of both net-zero energy and LEED Platinum. I believe it is because these goals were understood clearly from the beginning by the entire project team that the design was able to morph quickly into the construction of the building, even allowing for a shortened construction schedule, which was required by the Gardens to preserve their visitor’s experience during the busy summer season.

With thousands of visitors each year to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, in addition to the programs to be housed in the new Bosarge Family Education Center, there is a great opportunity for this building to teach many about the process and advantages of building net-zero. Solar panels cover the south-facing roof, which can be seen from the parking lot, prominently displaying the building’s green energy features. High-performance characteristics of the building that are not as readily visible to the visitor’s eye are highlighted throughout the Education Center by signage and an interactive building dashboard. These educational tools provide opportunities for visitors to learn about the design process and green features installed in the building, as well as interact with the building to understand energy production, energy consumption, water consumption and daily use patterns.

Image copyright of Robert Benson Photography

The Garden’s ultimate vision of creating a building that both meet the goals of being net-zero energy and achieving LEED Platinum has been met, but the further vision, and I believe more important vision,  of communicating to visitors the importance of resource and energy conservation still continues to be developed. A teachable mantra brought forth at the building’s grand opening, one that describes the finished product, “If a plant designed a building…” continues to grow this learning experience. Visitors to the Gardens can now complete that sentence with firsthand experience, “It would be powered by the sun,” “It would use natural materials as its building blocks,” and “It would harness the daylight.”

If you find yourself in the Boothbay region, I invite you to come visit and explore the building, the larger site and the gardens.

The Bosarge Family Education Center at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens was designed by Maclay Architects of Waitsfield, VT and Scott Simons Architects of Portland, ME.

I recently had the chance to travel to Montreal and present one of our Vermont projects, the net-zero Putney School Field House, at the international ASHRAE conference. This was an exciting chance for us to share with others how it really is possible to achieve net-zero in the cold climate of Vermont. This was also a great opportunity to learn about other projects, as the session we were presenting in also highlighted two other groups of net-zero building professionals, one from Italy and one from Canada.

Lessons from Across the Border

The Canadian group, which presented a study on high-performance Canadian buildings, i.e., those consuming less than 60% of Energy Code baseline, identified the fact that though there are a significant number of high-performance projects there are only a few of these that are close to net-zero and there are no existing net-zero commercial projects in the country. The presentation highlighted three of these close to net-zero buildings: the Creek Side Community Center in Vancouver, a material testing lab in Hamilton, Ontario and the Earth Ranger Center in Woodridge, which is north of Toronto. What was apparent through the description of these projects is though they were utilizing many of the strategies that we  also utilize in our building projects — such as daylighting, low energy equipment and heat recovery technologies — they were definitely missing pieces too. These projects focused quite a bit on the visible technologies of energy efficiency, but through this focus missed some of the places where we see the largest reduction in loads, such as envelope design, including high insulation levels and low air infiltration readings.

Lessons from Across the Ocean

The Italian group focused on a single project, the Leaf House located in Anacona, Italy. This project focused on the goal of its team to analyze the net-zero building process in an effort to better define the term “net-zero energy buildings,” and to inform the process of the International Energy Agency (IEA). An IEA work group has been established to study Net-Zero Energy Buildings to inform international actions related to energy and greenhouse gas requirements in the building industry. To optimize energy use, the Leaf House project uses the most advanced available technologies for the processes of distributing heat and producing electricity from renewable sources. Built as somewhat of a test facility for high performance design, where the major focus of the design was the reduction of CO2 emissions, this house has over 1000 sensors to monitor performance. Even after the installation of this advanced monitoring, this group determined that a more effective strategy of monitoring and a better building automation system could make significant improvements to the energy performance of the building. All in all, the project highlighted a very expensive way to achieve high-performance building design.

Lessons to Bring Back to Vermont

It has always been my point of view that the best high-performance and net-zero building projects are the simplest; They are the ones that take into account beauty in the living condition and contribute to a better way of life for the users. From the experience at the ASHRAE conference, this point was hammered home. What we are doing in Vermont, in a colder climate than any of these other projects were located, is making net-zero work.

Projects such as the Putney School Field House work because they take into account the high-performance building technologies and strategies that are readily available in the marketplace, but in addition, they are designed for a specific place, to integrate into the human experience and to make a better place for the users. Using technologies that are already commonly available in the marketplace means these buildings can work, and they can work cost effectively.

In order to make the best high-performance buildings a reality, the focus of our profession needs to be on design, on building the best teams possible, and on determining when simple out of the box strategies are more cost effective than their advanced technology counterparts.

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There are many measures used for building energy efficiency: total kBtu, kBtu/sf/yr, kWh/yr, therms/yr, kWh/sq.m/yr, $/yr or kBtu/person, and more. But determining when to use which metric, and even more important, how to make sense of a comparison of the energy efficiency of two different buildings, is no easy task.

An Example

Let’s use two glasses of water as an example. Some comparisons seem black and white – such as the question of which of the two cups of water sitting in front of us is hotter. Obviously the one that burns your finger is hotter than the one with the ice cubes floating around the rim. But the comparison becomes much more difficult when we start looking at which building performs better. Not only is there much more information required in making this decision, there is also the question of how you look at the numbers.

Variables

Let’s return to the example of the two cups of water. Our first question was pretty easy, but now let us look at the question of which cup of water requires less energy to maintain a temperature of 90 degrees. At this point quite a few more variables come into play. First, how much water is in the cup? If one cup has more water, it will require much more energy to maintain its temperature. Second, what type of cup is the water held in: glass, plastic, ceramic, or maybe an covered, insulated coffee mug? Third, how are the cups being heated — maybe one is being heated efficiently in the microwave, while another is being held over an open campfire. The cup over the open campfire will require much more energy to be used to keep it at temperature because the heating source is extremely inefficient. Another consideration might be where are the cups sitting while not being actively heated? If one cup is sitting on a sunny window ledge while another sits in a dark closet, it would make a dramatic difference. These are simple examples of the types of questions that have to be dealt with when measuring buildings and their energy performance, though building variables are even more varied and complex.

Making Sense of the Numbers

Now let us look at the second challenge – how to make sense of the numbers. The best way to look at energy utilization is to have an actual measured number for the amount of energy used during a defined period of time. For a building, this would be the total btus or kWhs used by all energy sources for a year, though in our example of the two cups of water this would likely be in btus per hour. For the sake of example, let’s say that cup 1 required 100 btus per hour to maintain temperature, while cup 2 used 150 btus per hour to maintain the same temperature. At first glance, you would say that cup 1 was more energy efficient. But here is where it gets complicated. What if cup 1 contained only 10 ounces of water while cup 2 contained 30 ounces of water. Therefore cup 1 requires 10 btus/hr/ounce while cup 2 requires 5 btus/hr/ounce. Looking at the numbers this way, it seems as if cup 2 is more energy efficient. So what really is the standard that we should be using? When looking at buildings what really makes sense?

A Solution?

I don’t have a definitive answer. The purpose of this discussion is not to decide on an unit of energy measurement that should always be used, but to outline the inherent challenges in comparing these metrics. Trying to understand how one building compares to anther in terms of energy usage is an enormous task, and different answers emerge based on how the numbers are manipulated and reported. Making it easier to make sense of building energy statistics is a challenge that needs to be addressed if we want to change the status quo and move toward increasing the stock of net-zero energy buildings. Do you have a suggestion? Please comment below.

Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC) recently invited Christiane Egger from O.O. Energiesparverband, an organization similar to VEIC located in Upper Austria, to visit Vermont. O.O. Energiesparverband functions to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in the federal state of Upper Austria. What is interesting is that the state of Upper Austria provides 33% of its energy from renewable sources including hydroelectric, solar thermal and biomass and is similar in size to Vermont. Upper Austria has a population of 1.38 million (similar to that of New Hampshire) and is about the size of Connecticut – with a quality of life equal or some might even say better than the majority of the U.S.

Upper Austria has made major strides in increasing the market share of renewable power as well as in the field of energy efficiency. The average residential home in Upper Austria today consumes 39 kWh/m² (12.4 kBtu/ft²)­­, as compared to the average residential home in the northeastern United States which consumes 163 kWh/m² (51.7 kBtu/ft²). One in every two new homes in Upper Austria is built with a solar thermal system which seems like almost an unconceivable number in the American market where solar panels are still thought of as a pricey accessory to a home where only those who can afford it and ask for it specifically include the solar panel in their design.

The organization of O.O. Energiesparverband has been in business since 1991 and has developed a strategy in Upper Austria to use a series of legal measures, financial measures and information activities which they refer to as the “stick”, “carrot”, and “tambourine” respectively. Their policy has followed the rule that these measures must be implemented together in order to make a difference, so all legal measures are backed up by financial incentives and financial incentives are backed by information activities so all measures have a chance of succeeding.

O.O. Energiesparverband’s accomplishments and ambitious goals for the future should work to function as an inspiration for those of us in Vermont. This is an example of a place, similar to Vermont in many senses, that is making renewable energy and energy efficiency work. Walking away from this talk I was struck by the sense that we in Vermont often think of ourselves on the cutting edge of energy efficiency and renewable energy, but really there are people in the world that are significantly further along than we are. We should actively search out these places and learn from their successes and failures to implement a plan in order to ensure a better future for all of us here in Vermont.

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At the 2010  Efficiency Vermont’s Better Buildings Conference, Andy Shapiro of Energy Balance and I offered an “Energy Challenge” to the audience of architects and building owners to begin a broad based campaign to track building energy performance. This challenge extends not only to collecting the data for your business or home, but also to publishing it so that we can begin to collectively learn where we stand and where we need to go.

Four Easy Steps

1. Data Collection: building name, location, size (total conditioned sq.ft.) and 12 months energy usage from all sources (gas, oil, propane, electricity, cord wood, wood chips, wood pellets and renewables)
2. Look at the Data: calculate total energy intensity based on 12 months of energy usage and building size (Btu/sq.ft./yr or kWh/sq.m./yr) and break the data down deeper looking at thermal (non-electric) intensity, heating only, the breakdown between renewables and non-renewables and differences between actual and estimated energy performance
3. Benchmarking / Comparison to standard: use a national or local standard (such as the 2030 Challenge)¹ to compare against and understand where you fall. Are you in the top 20%, the bottom 20%, or are you just about average?
4. Publish the data, so you and others can begin to learn more!

Both the designers and owners of the building will see benefits from this process. Calculating these numbers will allow for a better understanding of how the building works and how to learn from it as an example for the future.

Benefits

• Designers and owners can see how actual energy performance compares to estimates.
• When estimated and actual performance is different, it will encourage owners and designers to investigate and correct potential deficiencies in design, construction, and/or operation so that performance is improved and energy costs are reduced.
• Owners will be able more effectively develop a financial plan for their future.
• Tracking over time will encourage continuous performance improvements.
• Building owners along with design and construction teams will be able to set energy performance targets based on real data and maintain them.
• When adopted broadly, this process will help our society to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and increase its renewable energy independence by better understanding our energy intensity.

At Maclay Architects we have committed to the following practices, which we refer to as our Energy Pledge:

• We will estimate energy consumption for all of our projects.
• We will calculate total energy consumption from energy bills for all of our completed projects for at least the first year of operation (with owner approval).
• We will compare estimated with actual energy consumption for all of our projects.
• At the end of one year of tracking energy data, we will review the data with the building owner and offer suggestions for improvement when appropriate.
• After the first year, we will maintain cumulative owner energy data if desired by the owner and if the owner provides annual data.
• We will support efforts by others to expand this energy challenge so it will help reduce energy consumption in Vermont and beyond.

For additional information on how you can join the Energy Challenge or to request a simple template to begin doing your own energy calculations, just drop us a note here at the Net Zero Vermont blog, via the contact form.

How many people would buy a car without knowing its estimated mileage? Comparatively, how many people would build a building without knowing an estimated energy performance?

While all consumers have documented miles per gallon estimates for their vehicles, almost no building owners know how much energy their building uses, or what are reasonable amounts of energy for a building like theirs to consume. This remains true in spite of the fact that buildings are very often the largest and longest term investments that people ever make.

As building designers are beginning to more frequently estimate building annual energy consumption and costs, it is rarely the case that designers go the next step and compare this predicted performance to actual consumption based on fuel bills. And almost never, does the building owner have clear numbers that demonstrate how their building will or does perform compared to other similar buildings. In order to do this one must track energy consumed, divide this number by the size of the building, and then compare this number to benchmarks. This resulting number, found from taking total energy consumption and dividing by building size, is known as the Energy Utilization Index (EUI).

Expecting improvement in energy performance without metrics and measurement such as these is like believing we will find free energy. We must develop a clear picture of how our buildings perform individually as well as collectively to be able to set goals in the future of where we should be heading. There is obviously no point in setting a 50% reduction in energy usage goal if we do not know what we are starting from.

Should we, as Vermonters, be congratulating ourselves for leadership in the green economy and creating a renewable energy future?

Van Jones, former green jobs czar of the Obama administration, thought so when speaking at the 2009 Vermont Business Expo. But is this deserved? I am not so sure.

Yes, we all can point to great green projects, businesses, and individuals. And many of our towns, companies, and citizens are reducing their carbon footprints and are working toward carbon neutrality in the future.

But is this enough? Will this get us to where we need to be?

What about if Vermont as a state were to produce more energy than it consumes? And that energy was renewable for at least a billion years or so? And that this would be accomplished at a date certain, that is say 20 to 40 years from now? And there was a clear plan with measurable milestones that were achievable?

It’s been done in individual buildings, and even in small communities and islands. Heck, the entire human population did it for over 99% of its existence. And up until the 20th century, almost all energy used was still renewable. So wouldn’t this seem like a viable possibility for our future and our children’s future?

This seems like a goal that would make Vermont a leader with something truly valuable to offer our nation, and even the world. It seems to me that Vermont is at a size and scale where this is possible. Vermont has an incredible depth and diversity of green talent, knowledge and experience. We have a strong agricultural base with many natural resources and healthy ecosystems. We have long traditions of community service, thrift and hard work that can help to make the transition from overconsumption less burdensome. And this seems like a goal worth living and working for.

So what do you think? If there are others who are interested, I think the time is ripe to make this happen. This blog is a space where this can begin to happen. We invite and welcome others to join with us in making net zero energy-and more-begin to happen in Vermont and help the world move as well.

Faced with multiple challenges from environmental pressures due to climate change, energy price volatility and the economic downturn, we have never had a better time to build wisely. But we’re not talking about any ordinary buildings—we are talking about the design and construction of buildings that minimize the use of natural resources and energy. Such buildings protect the environment, pay for themselves through improved efficiency, lower operating costs through stable energy costs and avoid the need for outside (fossil-fuel based) energy sources.

We call these buildings Net Zero Energy buildings (NZEB). There are very few standing in the United States today—many more are on the drawing boards. But simply put, Net Zero energy buildings should become the new standard in “green” building as they can provide the best long-term solution to the environmental, energy and economic problems we face.

Net zero energy buildings (NZEBs) generate as much energy as they consume on an annual basis. The energy used is usually produced on-site and comes from renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal or biomass. Typically, the net zero building is connected to the electricity grid, using the grid as a balancing mechanism to accommodate the fluctuation of renewable energy sources. Often, people will ask whether it’s possible to achieve NZEB in the cold climates of New England. While it’s certainly easier to achieve in warmer, southern climates, the net zero goal is very reachable, albeit more challenging, here in New England and other similar climates.

How to Get from Here to There: Efficiency First, Renewables Second

Because renewable energy sources are usually more expensive than nonrenewable energy sources, the goal in any Net Zero energy building is to first reduce the energy needs of that building. Typically energy usage must be reduced by 70% or more (over current building efficiency codes). We call buildings that meet this greatly improved energy standard micro-load buildings.

Net Zero in New Construction versus Existing Buildings

Certainly, achieving micro load energy efficiency standards is easier and typically more cost-effective to do with a brand new building—essentially building it into the design plans from the outset. But it’s also possible to do when renovating existing buildings. With 300 billion square feet of existing buildings out there, bringing energy use down and improving building performance in the already built environment offers tremendous opportunities for savings.

The Future

Net zero energy buildings offer a tremendous opportunity for countering the environmental, energy and economic pressures we face today. But they will not become the standard for our buildings and communities overnight. It will take a concerted effort to educate business owners (and the public) about the potential these buildings offer and change the way we think. By taking a longer term view and seeing our buildings as the investments they truly are—investments in our energy future, the well-being of our planet and the health of our businesses—we will be moving toward a more stable, productive and sustainable way of life.