 This is our second panel on sustainable buildings. My name is Ellen Vaughn with EESI and We we talked in our last panel about important products and systems inside the building mechanical installation and systems to improve electrical performance with controls and sensors talked about lighting and I'm delighted now to welcome our panel to talk about design issues and envelope issues and and really how how it all comes together to to make a sustainable building and first I'd like to introduce a builder who is really actually doing this and That's that's a wonderful thing when you see a business person who has made the commitment and It's it's a good business decision as well. So I am really happy to introduce Kier grant to Grand Chan Who's president of high-performance homes? I had the pleasure of visiting the model grand opening and It's it's amazing and it's it's wonderful to experience high performance and He's building homes that meet a DOE zero energy ready home certifications. So Here how about this? Can you guys hear me? My name is Kier. I've been a builder since I guess in the industry since 1983 I Went into the zero energy ready concept about eight years ago intrigued me. I'm an engineer I thought it was a possibility Anything that had been done but a possibility Well, but lo and behold after years of R&D. I started doing it started building it the way that we do it We just take it from the basically the outside envelope The make the home like a refrigerator make it as energy efficient make it as tight as you possibly can No air is moving around. No air escapes We make sure that the inside of the home is quality controlled for indoor air quality humidity Anything that could be harmful. We have an IAQ system indoor air quality that will knock out down to point zero zero one micron of any allergies dust Debris it's kind of like a hospital inside We do the envelope and then we add PV full of a takes We use dowel solar shingles on our homes at the lengths of Gettysburg and what that does is it offsets it So the home is zero energy ready the PV produces enough to make the home. So it has no electric bill We use a geothermal product for our HVAC system It's a probably 30 40 percent More effective than air source units and it's getting better every single day We use all energy as energy star appliances We take our insulation to the ninth level. We use a sips panel on the exterior perimeter It's 10 times stronger than conventional construction. We spray form our insulation We blow in a minimum of a r49 that way everything is nice and tight We use energy efficient windows what Tom's here We actually met through the NFRC conference and prior to so it's it's important that I have the highest quality of products You know all across the board We at high performance home has pledged that we will build every single home Not just one or two every single home to a zero energy ready status There's less than one percent of these homes United States I wanted I want to do it for the world. I think it's my responsibility my responsibility for the nation for the country I want to carbon-neutral want to offset everything we possibly can these houses are worth it You live in a cleaner environment. Everybody is Happier and healthier the the comfort is unbelievable. It's just about soundproof as well Looks like a regular home acts like a regular home, but it doesn't you don't have electric bills You have a lot of comfort. We also are petitioning So that we can get the tax credits Incentivized I believe there is on the floor of 45 l the new home tax credits. I support that We're also talking about getting mortgages that are reduced rate for these types of homes Because they are less at risk than a regular conventionally constructed home Rightly convinced constructed homes are at a hers 100 an energy star which most people have heard of energy star It's about a hers 63 Good builders are building to the 50s. We actually have our model home at a hers 23 We have another one within the development. That's a hers 16. This is off the charts. We're not just practicing We can we're doing it day in day out Well, and all I want to do is change the world and keep doing it one house at a time All right. Thank you care So putting it all together energy efficiency and adding renewables and and and getting high performance Thank you. I'd like to now turn to Paul Bertram who is Director of environment sustainability and government affairs with Kingspan insulated panels Paul Right. Thanks for the invitation and thanks for coming to hear our presentations Kingspan is a global company out of Ireland and they really wonder what the heck we're doing over here in the US And a couple meetings with the Department of Energy They said well, how did you make this all happen in Europe and the answer was we bloody well mandated it So we're not going to get that here So we have to figure out how we can influence this the best way we can they have a number of divisions by the way they have a Solar division Kingspan energy, which is out of Jessup, Maryland here. They have an insulation division headquartered out of Atlanta they have an under air floor system that's headquartered out of Jessup Merlin Maryland and that's basically for data centers and moving air but the insulated metal panel division is the largest and So echoing off of your homes that you're building we think that The envelope is being relatively ignored in the commercial market. So we're focused on the commercial market and My focus is envelope first energy efficiency So how many are familiar with basic building construction? If you were going to build a wall Can you imagine how many pieces and parts have to go into a wall system? Can you imagine how many trades might be involved in that and If you were a really great architect designer engineer and you had all the perfect details Where were the latent defects going to occur? They're going to occur in those trades and all those assemblies. So what if you could put out a wall system that looked like that That met all the requirements So a sip that is this is the equivalent to a sip the difference between a sip and an insulated wall panel Is a sip is actually a construction? it actually is can assume The structural integrity of the unit so it it doesn't require framing and things like that You have to have a steel frame for insulated metal panels. So that would be the only difference Also, I think I don't know are there joints in your sips. I can't So we have we have joints in these also But you're eliminating a whole lot of things. These are both sips and insulated metal panels are off-site manufactured under high quality higher quality and Faster build speeds and they have a lot to offer. So we think that at King's Band We think that there's more focus needing to be Hate attention to the envelope Codes are driving new construction. So we feel like that's coming along. Yes state-to-state. It varies and we have work to do there on driving Energy efficiency of the building envelope at the state levels But where I believe that the real benefit of these plays in is in deep energy retrofits on existing buildings So I was involved in a project in Boston. It's called Castle Square And if you're interested I have a white paper see me after the presentation. I'll be happy to send it out to you but it was over a 500,000 square feet of a 7-story facility That was built in the 1960s. It was a brick and concrete block structure that had no insulation in Boston, Massachusetts so They decided that the tenants this was tenant owned it was public private. So there are some investment Development companies in it, but the owners were tenant owners and they decided they needed to upgrade the building and Basically through a series of studies they decided that they were going to need to reclad the building So we reclad at it with this material Interesting story the tenants did not have to move out. There was some disruption, but it was a scheduled disruption New windows got put in Went up to an R5 window They went to an R40 so they went from zero to an R40 on the exterior the envelope represented a 30% improvement Depending on who you want to talk to in this project the developer involved said that they were 52 percent of over baseline Where they started the architects as they were at 68 percent So DOE cheered anything over 50 percent. So it was pretty significant There's a lot to be learned out of it and most importantly in this white paper. We have one year of actual data to verify what the performance Actually was versus what was modeled and where things needed to be done and one thing that I will tell you that came out that was significant was that commissioning wasn't done until a year after the project was built and Part of this was a new boiler system and they had three Solar hot water units up on the roof and they were all there and looked really great two of them actually work One of them wasn't even hooked up to the system. So There was a lot to be learned and the essence of this is Exactly what DOE is looking for repeatable scalable models what you're doing is a repeatable scalable model and Although not quite passive house Principles we're pretty close to the air infiltration exfiltration rates and the insulation that you're looking for and so What's the barrier? Well the payback on this project depending on how you wanted to Peel the onion was somewhere between 19 and 30 years payback so This was a pretty unique project in that it was a tenant owned project They didn't really care how long it took to get the payback because their utility bill went down significantly And they got the benefit of that right away But if you're a building owner, maybe it's an office building something like that you might not want 30 years on the books So I agree that we need to look for Mechanisms in financing and incentives to help do this and there are a lot of them out there but we we need to influence that however we can legislatively and and the reason is because the envelope is being ignored because energy is too cheap in the US and We have to create some sort of a carrots and sticks kind of approached it as to get where we want to go so Thank you very much Thank you, Paul. That was Very helpful and you really covered a lot of important issues. I appreciate that and one I'm gonna pick up on is the the retrofit issue that's New construction in this country is what 1% typically of the housing of the building stock So retrofits are critical But it's also important that we do it right to begin with so care You know, we won't have that That great need that we will because these will last And and still be performing well and the other issue is performance Not just modeling when we need the good design then we need to make sure that they're actually working as as intended and so so Performance measurement and codes and standards those things are all important and that's a good thing Just to have segue into Tom Herron's Presentation Tom is director of communications and marketing for the National Fenestration rating council So looking at those Products part of the envelope and and how how they measure up Is is all important so Tom Yeah, thank you. My name is Tom Herron with the National Fenestration rating council and Fenestration of course refers to windows doors and skylights and I agree Absolutely ignored It's overlooked in so many instances But you know being here today It makes me think about how far at the same time that green building and sustainability really has come You know just 50 years ago. It was a big Goal among design Professionals to keep the outdoors out as much as possible in fact I did a little research and back in 1961 the downtown National Capital Committee in Washington DC decided they were going to build a new central library And so they hired a consulting firm to determine what features the building should have and they came back and said partly in their report Windows serve practically no useful purpose modern lighting and air conditioning methods have removed the need for reliance on natural light and air Shocking and it went on to say a more even and satisfactory level of lighting and temperature can be achieved if there are no windows Imagine this and unfortunately This idea kind of took hold and it persisted for a long long time after that So maybe this has something to do with why the building envelope is being ignored today But you know, we all know better We know that windows do in fact play an important role and they improve our quality of life by making residential and commercial buildings not just more energy efficient, but also more comfortable and They do a lot to contribute to green building sustainability and they deliver a lot of health and human performance Benefits and NFRC's role as Ellen mentioned in all of this is serving as an independent third-party certification organization for energy performance Fenestration and residential and commercial buildings and under our program windows are independently tested certified and then labeled So that's the consumers and the building owners assurance that when they see the label They know that the product is going to perform up to the manufacturer's claims it's kind of a watchdog system and our Ratings also help the EPA determine which which windows doors and skylights are going to be eligible for the energy star program we were established back in 1989 as a Kind of following the oil embargo of the 1970s. That's what really brought energy into the forefront I talk about cheap energy. I can remember being a kid and pulling up to the gas station. It was 15 cents a gallon and We certainly come a long way since then but It got to the point where manufacturers were making window manufacturers were making a lot of outlandish claims about how well their products perform and Something needed to be done about that. So fenestration industry leaders collaborated and created the NFRC and as I mentioned what that really does is hold manufacturers accountable and provides a layer of protection and In 1992 we were recognized as the official rating council for windows doors and skylights in the energy Policy Act. So why is all of this important? because in addition to empowering homeowners to make more informed choices NFRC's ratings programs enable code officials to verify compliance for commercial buildings and this is one area where we can realize a tremendous amount of improvement Lawrence Berkeley laboratories in California did a study Just a couple of years ago and they concluded that the amount of energy being wasted through inefficient windows annually is about 50 billion dollars staggering number obviously and Today only about 30% of commercial buildings in the US are using high performance windows And the way that we can make improvements here is through increased code enforcement And one of the reasons that this has been challenging and we need policymakers to look at this is that Energy code enforcement a lot of times take a back takes a backseat to health and safety issues and Another reason is just a lack of understanding many people don't realize that Windows are always performing. You know, we look at the windows right now, and they're just kind of sitting there We can't really see them doing anything, but there's always this tug-of-war going on we have the air conditioner running meanwhile the Sun is beating in and there's Constantly the struggle taking place during the winter this can really add up to In your utility costs because you have to blast your heat in the summer the opposite tends to have an effect and The way to take care of this is to really pay attention to your windows from the very outset in the integrated design portion of a project Strategically place windows can maximize passive solar design And so, you know, why should policymakers care about this? Because in addition to reducing this 50 billion dollars worth of wasted energy high performance have been high performance windows Have been shown to improve health and human performance as we were Talking about earlier and in fact a lot of you may be aware of this But there are a lot of studies that show that people in hospitals that have adequate access to daylight They tend to heal faster and require less pain medication students have been shown to retain information and do better on Tests than their counterparts who study under artificial lights and There are a number of other studies that just attest to the positive benefits of day lighting And so this is an added benefit on top of the energy that we can that we can say And so because they play such an important role in making commercial buildings better more energy efficient healthier policymakers can really set an example by Requiring code enforcement in federal buildings in particular that'd be a great place to get started and this in turn would Reinforce the need among local governments and throughout the private sector And it also helps protect businesses by ensuring that the buildings they occupy are the most energy efficient So reducing this 50 billion dollar loss it helps bolster the economy You know that when businesses are spending less money on energy They have more money to reinvest into their businesses and Additionally it would also create new jobs or a lot of benefits here as building codes evolve New jobs for quality control assessors building commissioning professionals and energy auditors would emerge and Policymakers can support these initiatives requiring fenestration energy code compliance in commercial buildings and one way to do this would be by tying compliance to eligibility eligibility for funding and this is really important because a lot of people think that it's the Transportation industry that uses the most energy in the US But it's actually the buildings and that's why we need to pay more attention to this and particularly to windows in the building envelope, thank you Thank You Tom. Yeah, that's It's so important as we know we we like to have natural light And I have to say when I stood in front of the window at Kier's house Upstairs if I was in my house, it would be hot and It cold downstairs probably It was comfortable. It was what 90 something outside. It was comfortable inside it was I Felt no heat coming in that window and it was you know but I could still look out and It didn't have any film on it. It was just It was the experience people I think have to be inside better buildings to know What what makes them better so? So thank you the windows and technologies and I think we have a lot of opportunities to sometimes We can't get all the products That we'd like in this country, so I think we have a lot of opportunities for manufacturing and Creating new jobs with with even higher performing products Patrin playing a Berg is co-founder and executive director of the passive house Institute us and Patrin will Talk about what you've heard some people allude to the passive house design And I think it really I mean literally will wrap and tie together a lot of these a lot of these other issues and So Patrin I I'm so glad you're here. Thank you, and I'll let you take it away Thank you, Alan, and I think it's probably no coincidence that you placed me last That is indeed true. So what is passive house it's Maybe not a particularly attractive name, but it has gained some recognition recently in the building efficiency market and Well, everybody already touched on the elements that go into a passive building. We have a super insulated airtight envelope Used compared it to the refrigerator. That's in the colder climates were typically referred to like a thermos bottle So you retain the heat gains that you have inside of the building and you make use of the passive means of heating and cooling your building Now that's actually a really cool thing if you design in that holistic way and you employ all these different technologies you end up with a building system that is at the same time a mitigation strategy for climate change and also an adaptation strategy for climate change so Instead of just only focusing on the numbers in the building efficiency We probably also need to start thinking about making our buildings more resilient and that's what passive building also does So how do you know that you have actually a passive building and this is where the numbers come in? We might not have to go too much into detail, but it's important to know where that specific point is said that we certify to and Amongst all the building systems certification systems green building systems We are probably unique because we have like really a pass fail a clear line in the sand So if you meet this particular energy performance, then you're in the club and if not, then you're out the club Outside of it. We have a very strict energy efficiency standard that also includes high air tightness levels So What does this number come from right like did we pull this out of the nail? It's actually a direct response to kind of like now zooming back out big picture What do we need to achieve? What is our main objective? Our main objective is to meet our Climate and carbon reduction goals globally and that's where we started when we when we formulated the standard So how much carbon do we have to have to save globally? Then we can calculate back how much is that per person and then we can translate that into a particular Performance metric that we measure buildings against why is this important to policy makers? Well, it's starting to become maybe something like a safety issue, right? Like I walk We're based in Chicago and I Walk the streets of Chicago and not very many buildings are employing these strategies They're actually two condom buildings are going up right and left for my apartment right now There's not a lick of insulation in these buildings and it's I don't know in my personal opinion It's kind of scandalous. It's essentially we're still building tents out there And you might have seen some of the infrared photos that have been taken of very beautifully designed star architect Skyscrapers they are essentially like radiators plugged into the utility grid. We're heating the atmosphere and if you equate like the energy consumption of a building to the Carbon emissions that are related to what they are using then it's it's it's a real shocker That is like becoming a health and safety issue We need to curb carbon emissions of buildings that they are allowed to put out into the atmosphere the atmosphere being our like Ultimate comments if you will so with our standard setting and program We we do education. How do you get there? We teach folks how to design to these standards how to effectively integrate all these systems that we've been talking about and We also certify buildings make sure that the specifications that the architect puts on the drawings that that actually gets being put into place and that the building performs the way it has been modeled and So we started about like 10 years ago and We have some really pretty exciting news to report this year has been absolutely phenomenal And I'm not really sure what's happening. There's a disturbance in the force. So maybe there's finally some political will might have all started with the one city report from New York City's mayor de Blasio that he issued last September. You might have seen that one New York City committed to an 80% carbon reduction by 2050 and one of the strategies that they very immediately identified was passive building Standards and principles and they named one particular project Which is one of the very first multi-family certified passive buildings in New York City It's called the Nicarbaca project by architect Chris Benedict and It is also an affordable project and she built it for the same cost cost parity now imagine that and Since then there have been a couple other people looking at the systems of passive house and You might have seen this recently Like an article was in the New York Times the to be tallest passive building in the world just broke ground Cornell is building a residence hall and another mid-rise is also just breaking ground Developed by a for-profit developer who claims that he can build it for 1% additional cost for profit development So these are all really excellent news and what we're finding if you get into bigger buildings The installation value is really not that much more than code actually like those larger buildings They have an envelope of about an hour 30 hour 35 Maybe our 40, but that that would be already a little bit smaller building So we can do this we absolutely can do this and I believe very strongly that passive building will be a cornerstone To achieve our carbon neutral goals Was talked about earlier to eliminate carbon from our from our way of life Oh, yeah before I go We actually had some policy success the city council of New York City did propose legislation That would require all capital buildings to meet our certification fees plus And that is groundbreaking That is really quite something so the city to come forward saying like to meet our carbon reduction goals. We will require That standard or similar or equivalent, of course They cannot write just like one one group into into legislation and just yesterday the city of Seattle voted that projects mid-rise In the city of Seattle will be allowed to build to a higher F. A. R So they they are going to be allowed to build more square footage on the same lot than other Projects would be allowed to who are not built to this energy efficiency standard So we're seeing a couple of these really good things happening and also in the affordable market Had green communities criteria. They're starting to look at passive to incentivize Affordable developers because of course it's a win-win for everybody. It's a win-win for them. They pay less energy They have low maintenance footprints and the affordable Rentals they pay less utility bills So We really hope that this will take off. We are currently seeing a hockey stick growth curve and Thank you Ellen for all your great work and your great support. Thank you Thank you so much Gatrin. What a great wrap-up. Yes, if I Think resiliency could have certainly been in that in the title and that is That is critical Tom you mentioned a little bit ago that building sector uses most of the energy and that that's true Some people don't Think about that but building that's just a building operation. It's about 40% of our total energy use 70% of the electricity use employing these strategies Really is getting that down to almost we're getting down to zero and buildings are we have the technologies the expertise the best practices to to to actually create buildings that produce energy so These are these are becoming More and more as we train more of the building professionals and as we certify more of the products as we have Innovators who are taking a chance and getting out there and showing that it can be done cost competitively and the beauty of it is that We address Environmental Problems while we also create better places to live and we spend about 90% of our time indoors Think about that. That's Kind of stunning and so we really should make sure that that environment is is Conducive to our health and safety and well-being And oh by the way, we could save money and we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions so it it's Definitely a win-win this industry is Estimated at I think 3.6 percent or the construction industry 86% of the GDP but think about Manufacturing all these products the jobs that go into Installing servicing So it it's it's a huge part of our economy and the more that these new products are Being built here This is growing our economy in a sustainable way right now So I am so thankful that all of you came in to tell this story and you did it so eloquently And thank you all so much for coming Really appreciate it and please do Call any of us if you have questions and And we'll have our next panel. I think in just a couple minutes and we'll wrap it up. So thank you. Oh Any question do we have a minute for questions perhaps? I'm not sure This ends at 345. So yeah So I've worked on one more of these these horrific stark attack building They like a lot of and a lot of the time they'll site. Oh, well, these new high emissivity windows They're something so it's okay now. We can put we can glaze the entire building Do you think the kind of guidelines and policies exist right now to ensure that the right kinds of windows are being used on the right faces of the buildings and that Relatively high-tech windows aren't being abused and not really being incorporated into the holistic design It's getting a lot better actually because a whole building commissioning is starting to Become more prominent, you know, there's a a lot of thinking that co-compliance It is the most important thing and that's kind of been the prevailing attitude for a long long time That's beginning to shift toward being able to show ongoing performance and probably the most Efficient buildings in the future aren't going to be the ones that initially met the code But the ones that you can keep showing over and again How well they're performing and That's the kind of thing that you know policy makers can make a big difference by Promoting things to go in that direction So I would second that it's getting better. So in New York City, I was surprised They are also now requiring actually architects to pay attention to thermal bridging Even though they have not made it made a decision yet to put like one energy performance metric on On it in terms of code, but that that is already going a long ways But I would still say like no matter how good the window performs you We will have to move away from the all glass buildings. That's not so for example like the concrete slabs They they all go straight to the outside right them if you don't have a curtain wall So that's a huge normal bridge right there just as an example If we pay attention to that maybe maybe we can get there So when do we test the building to know whether it's performing right or wrong After it's built so there is a new standard out called the building enclosure commissioning Standard and ASTM puts that out and that is a way to do Incremental testing as the buildings being built to make sure that it will more reasonably deliver the intended Design and output and that's also the basis of driving something called outcome based performance codes Which you're going to see more of as time goes on Thank you all was there another question over here. Yes, sir. I Guess get it get the performance out to the public Just like we've been building these homes very successfully, but nobody knows we're doing it Sam Raskin who is DOE He's chief architect for zero energy-ready program, which is the adherence that we build to He's standing at the highest podium. He's trying to get the word out. We're trying to do it ourselves It's just a function of nobody knows it's there Passive house Eight years ago. I didn't know what it was and now you probably ask one of five people him Fias what is it Fias? Can you please spell that and that is the technology that we're all going towards and again? This is you know, it's a sustainable. It's affordable. It is the It's the right or the country to the future. This is what we should do And how we get it out just by doing it by doing it and you know Glorifying it saying okay. Yes, we do have a hearse 16 That's an existence on the links of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania and it has not an electric bill and it will not nobody knows about matter of fact these people that specific couple then we want to tell the neighbors they're embarrassed So they're there are lots of associations trade Associations AIA USGBC lots of ways that we can deliver the education But what is the education that is the key and the missing link in all of this is building science and building physics And that that's we have to bring all of that into a focus architects are not taught Other than a few technical colleges, they're not taught building physics or building science And we're at a level now when we start talking about system performance and outcomes We have got to get there And so that's where the education needs to be is on building science and building systems and building physics Yeah, and I like to second that so because it was absent in the marketplace and we had absolutely not nothing to work with when we first started We started our own training programs So we have a training program for certified past false consultants who are doing the designing like this would be the architects who show up and They get taught building science and the modeling tools. We have one training program for builders And actually in fact the builders are really excited I think a lot of builders they do things like every day the same but At first they were like well, I think you guys are crazy with your air tightness And then it was a real nice challenge and people really get into it and they really have fun doing it And you're saying it like you're excited about your job, right? It is an absolute challenge to build a day and day out exactly like you're saying when do you test it? How we test our homes we do it as we go along for you drywall we do a Blower door we do a duck blaster Probably very little everybody but us up here called. That's awesome I got a CH 50 at 1.1 and she's terribly excited because she knows that we're right there It's important to know what the house is doing as we're moving along because like you said you wait till the end All of a sudden something fails. You don't know why it failed your enter forensic mode then exactly and like you know Our steps panels very similar to yours the thermal bridging. We don't have to by force We don't have headers. It's 10 times stronger without it. So minimize the thermal bridging. You don't have it There's less sound transfer. It's no less heat and loss and it starts before it gets to the build up We need to read teach people how to design there was emphasis on the integrated design bring everybody together up front and Don't get into forensic mode because that is expensive and you do it right from the beginning. It's really not difficult absolutely and thank you for saying that because one example even With with paint you might think well that could be substituted But if you have a particular for example daylighting scheme that requires a certain Reflectivity and that gets sort of substituted down the line because that specialty contractor wasn't involved That can change the numbers that can change the whole Performance so it has to be has to come together in an integrated way So thank you all so much. Thank you for a good question. I wish there was a simple answer, but it really is about Professional training and I think there are some institutional challenges. We're going to talk about in our next panel things like You know the electric grid and perhaps We'll talk about financing The way we value, you know builders should be Seeing the the value that they're putting in homeowners should be seeing the value insurance and Getting a loan they should You know be get credit for not spending a lot of money on energy. I mean that's that's helping We just have systems in place that Really haven't caught up with this yet, so I think there's a lot of room for some policy Thinking and and it doesn't It can be I think across the whole spectrum of education and financing a lot of things so thank you for that Thank you all so much for your wonderful presentations and thank you for coming To the buildings panel You