 from Sunny Honolulu, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii, welcome one and all. Today we have an exciting topic, at least for a lot of us, and that is the fact that Honolulu has a brand new energy code. What in the world is an energy code? Well, when you build a home or a building, you have to follow certain codes, plumbing code, fire code, electrical code, and the energy code ensures that the building is built for maximum energy efficiency. That is you're using efficient equipment and you're controlling that equipment, so it's on only when you need it. That way you get all the comfort, all the safety you need at reduced electricity prices and that helps us all by reducing the burning of fossil fuel here on Oahu. So this code applies just to Honolulu and by way of background, building codes are upgraded every three years. Why is that? Because technology keeps on improving and knowledge keeps on improving, so we reflect those improvements in the national codes and it applies to plumbing, electrical fire, and so forth. So what does Honolulu's new energy code look like? In this case, it applies just to what's called low rise residential. Those are buildings, either are traditional single family homes or apartment buildings that are maximum three stories or less. In other words, they're basically a walk up apartment type buildings. Next slide. And we're moving from the 2015 energy code to the 2018. And you say, well, why are we lighting behind? Shouldn't it be a later code? Yes, it should, but stuff happens and delays come and we need to deliberate to deliberate with many parties about what the new code is gonna look like and that just plain old takes time. So next slide. So why do we focus on the energy code? If you look at the graph, way up top represents the way that homes and buildings were built beginning about the year 2000 and that downward slope means that with every three years we improve, improve, improve the energy use intensity of those buildings. That means for every square foot of space you're using less energy. And this is why all the new bells and whistles are being added, added, added. How do we do that by specifying the best of the energy efficient equipment and the envelope? The roofs, the windows, the walls and we get, in Hawaii's case, we let less heat in and we cool the space in a much more efficient manner and way down the lower right you will see zero. And that means that as a national goal, all new homes and buildings shall be zero net energy by the year 2030. And that means that the need energy use in those homes and buildings shall be so low that when you put PV photovoltaic or whatever on the roof or you have a remote source of clean renewable energy that renewable energy amount will equal the amount of energy being used at that home or building. Very ambitious goal and we're on track. Technologically it's feasible already. Next slide please. So what is the sequence for Honolulu? The building, the city council in its wisdom voted to adopt the energy code. It went into effect on November 23rd. Just what, 10 days or so ago. So this code is in effect right now. Next slide please. Oh, I should mention that the Never Island codes are, they're all looking at adopting 2018 but they haven't gotten to their final solution yet. Now there's three documents you need when complying with the energy code. One is the national document on the left that's was decided at the national level and Hawaii is very active incidentally in participating at the national level and striving to maximize energy savings and bring down costs. Then there are the Hawaii amendments and those basically have to do with the fact that we have this beautiful climate where we don't need heating but we do need a lot of cooling and that can be either active cooling with air conditioners or passive cooling but just taking advantage of our beautiful climate and then you have the Honolulu amendments that start with the Hawaii amendments and then amend from there and we'll be focusing today on the Honolulu amendments. Next slide please. So we have just for very basic review the energy code divides buildings into residential against three stories or below. There's just basically walk up apartments or single family and commercial and high rise residential apartment buildings are considered commercial, why? Because they include elevators and once you get into buildings with elevators everything gets a lot more complicated and you get a lot more safety issues in there. So any building or stories and above is considered a commercial building. Now when you have a mix of commercial and residential that means that usually the bottom floor has say retail spaces and then you have a three story building with residential above that. Though that residential portion is considered residential or commercial portion where you're having a retail space office space that is resident commercial. So you have to mix those two up. Next slide please. So you have different options for complying with residential codes. The most common one is called the prescriptive option which we'll be dealing primarily with today. And that is simply your wall insulation shall be X, your roof insulation shall be Y and you shall use this type of cooling equipment. You shall have efficiencies in your plumbing and so forth. You just check off the boxes, check, check, check. And then you have the performance option where you say, I wanna design differently. And so you calculate what your energy use would be if you followed the prescription path and then you say, I wanna design this way instead and you prove through calculations that your design is equal to or lower than in energy use, the prescriptive. And then you have the simulated performance. There's something called energy modeling and you can model the building according to what you want. And then you have the energy use index where you are given a rating from one to a hundred and you prove that your own design, again, this is individual design is equal to or lower than the model code from prescriptive. Next slide, please. So one of the very unique features of Hawaii's code is the tropical zone code. And that is where a home is maximum 50% air condition. Now, how could that be? Well, if you have a two-story residence and the first story is your living room, kitchen and so forth, you might be comfortable there just being cooled with ceiling fans and a lot of windows through the trade winds but you like to sleep in air conditioned space. So on the second floor are your bedrooms and each one of them would have their own little what are called split systems, very small air conditioning systems and they have to comprise less than 50% of the area. So if you get to less than 50%, you're considered a tropical home. Now, what else do you have in a tropical home? You have ceiling fans because they are the most efficient way of keeping cool except for windows. You situate your windows such that you know where the trade winds are coming from, you have the large openings for the trade winds to come in and then you have windows on the opposite side to let the trade winds go out. So you have a breeze through your room. Many of us are fortunate enough to live in such homes and we're just taking advantage of the fact that we live in the most beautiful climate in the world and of course that reduces the cost of building the building because you don't have to put all that expensive equipment in and your utility bill goes way, way down. And another requirement is that you must have solar water heating. In the old days, the resistance heating, you know those old fashioned water heaters where you turn it on and it makes hot water by just making hot the rods inside the water heater very hot, very, very inefficient. It used to comprise as much as 40% of the entire energy use in a typical non-conditioned home. Well, now you must have solar water heating but if you can't afford solar water heating or you have other restrictions, you can apply for a variance and you might get a heat pump instead. Next slide, please. So a big change here is that the 2015 code required efficient lighting such that incandescence, the old fashioned lights that you and I grew up with where you, if you touch them, you literally burn your fingers. Those were banned by the code because back then we had the compact fluorescent lights, the curly Q lights, or if you are in other spaces, you have the fluorescent lights up in the ceiling. And these numbers that are now banned were required to just discontinue the use of incandescent lights. I mean, each one of those lights was a little mini furnace. Do we need more heat or less heat in Hawaii's homes and buildings less? So we got rid of those old fashioned incandescence and now we've taken this a step further. This is unique to Honolulu where the definition of an efficient light that you must use is 30 lumens per watt. That's the equivalent of miles per gallon. And the LEDs, light emitting diodes, are far more efficient than even the fluorescence were and the fluorescence have mercury in them. Mercury, highly, highly toxic. So you have greater efficiency and far less electricity expense dealing with LEDs. And this provision effectively forces you into LED lights. And by the way, they are cost competitive or even cheaper than the fluorescence and Hawaii energy, the people who give the rebates, they incentivize LED lights very heavily. So you can pick these up at your hardware store really, really cheaply or your contractor can do the same. So you're getting a whole lot of benefit. If you, the incandescence could get up to over 300 degrees which is about the temperature of an oven for baking things, whereas with the LEDs, you can put your hand on them, even a larger LED and at the base, you'll feel a warmth. And that is all the heat they're giving up. And that's just another hands-on way of measuring efficiency. The less heat is produced, the more efficient the device is. So just a little side note, if you haven't converted to LEDs in your home, if you wanna save energy and be more comfortable, convert to LEDs. That's what the code requires too, is for a new construction. Next slide, please. Ceiling fans, this was the objective, much, much, much discussion with the developers and what we, the energy office or the Oahu Resilience Office were advocating was that in new construction, residential, ceiling fans be in every living space, each bedroom and then in the living room. And we had long discussions with developers and we reached a compromise where a ceiling fan junction box, that means a little electrical outlet in every, in the roof or in ceiling of every bedroom, every larger room in the residence must, it must be wired for ceiling fans. And then the customer when she is buying a new home will be offered the option of having a ceiling fan. And if she says yes, then the builder installs the ceiling fan there. And why do we love ceiling fans so much? They use one 20th as much electricity as does a split system AC unit. And if you don't know what split system AC is, it's the new form of air conditioning, usually for individual small spaces like bedrooms. And they are way, way, way more efficient than the old fashioned air conditioners that hang out from windows. And they look a lot better. And another option, two ceiling fans was called whole house fans. And they're part of the code, they're allowed there. And that's when you have a big exhaust fan or series of exhaust fans up in the attic. And then you have vents that go from your living space up into the attic. And then you have a way for the heat that goes up into the attic to exhaust out into the atmosphere. That's also a very, very, very energy efficient way of cooling your home. You promote a breeze throughout the building. And as we've all experienced, if you have a breeze coming across your skin, you are much, much, much more comfortable. Next slide, please. So here's a biggie or Honolulu electric panel readiness. And that means when you build a new home, you must have number one in your electrical panel box. You must have a separate line dedicated to a photovoltaic system. The photovoltaics are not required, just the wiring. You have to size your electrical equipment to accommodate photovoltaic. And then you must supply a wire up to under the roof where you anticipate a new owner might install a photovoltaic system. So when you're ready, the contractor just accesses the electrical outlet right under the roof and plugs it right in. That saves immense amounts of money because you're doing all this wiring, you're doing the sizing while you're building a home anyway. So that's much, much, much cheaper than, in some cases, needing to go through concrete to put a new wire in and so forth. So this is in anticipation of the huge, well, the vast majority of all home rooms in Hawaii, including photovoltaic. I mentioned zero net energy. We need all the photovoltaic energy we can get. Incidentally, we lead by far, we lead the nation in installation of photovoltaics. And by the by, we now are the solar contractors voluntarily or urge the home owner to install batteries along with the photovoltaic panels. Why? Because in the middle of the day, we generate the photovoltaic panels that exist already generate more electricity than we need. So what do you do? You store it up in these big batteries that are about the size of refrigerators. And if it's a commercial system, you get a huge battery array. And then you have that energy waiting for the time when the sun goes down, you're no longer getting solar energy. So you fill it in with, fill that gap in with the batteries plus. We have what's called an evening peak where everybody's coming home from school, from work, the tourists are coming home from the beaches, from shopping, whatever. Suddenly your demand for electricity goes way, way, way up. And that's what these batteries are going to be filling. So the utility now has a dual role not just to supply the energy, but to modulate to bring the battery electricity in and then feed it back into the grid. It's a much more complicated grid than it used to be. So that is required for new homes. Next slide please. Electric vehicles. Not only must new homes be wired for photovoltaic panels, but for electric vehicles also for a single family home, this would be generally one outlet in the garage. And you don't have to put any electric vehicle charger there. You just have to make it ready. You have to have the dedicated wire and then a plug in your garage so that when the homeowner is ready to install an electric vehicle charger, the contractor just unscrews the plate and boom, there's the outlet just waiting for him. And again, you can imagine the dollar savings achieved when you do this with new construction. Why do we need electric vehicles? Because when we have clean energy supplying everything, that vehicle is running on clean energy. It has virtually zero emissions. And we all know about the global warming and we all know that we're behind. And if we don't take some pretty large steps in the near future, our children and our grandchildren are going to be living in very, very unhappy circumstances. We can give instance after instance of the fact that half the world is burning up, another half the world is flooding. We in Hawaii, except for Lina, have dodged that bullet. We give thanks for that, but it is coming. And a much of the world, as I said, is experiencing this. The shift to electric vehicles is really, really an important way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Next slide, please. Okay, so as I mentioned before, you can comply with the new code either by the prescriptive method or by, and that just involves saying, check, check, check, you need this, you need this, you need this, you need this, or there's a performance alternative where you make a plan and say, I don't wanna follow the code, but I know I need to design an efficient building. So here's what I want to do. And then you do your calculations. If I followed the prescriptive method, I would consume X amount. I'm following my own method and the performance of my building is equal to or less than the energy used by the prescriptive method. Next slide, please. Okay, this is the energy rating index. And this is where you're actually shooting for zero as in zero fossil fuel emitted and you're given for the climate zone in Hawaii 57. So you have to start with a base. And again, you're shooting for a very, very low energy use. So the 2006 code is the base of 100. And now we're allowed 57. So we've improved energy use in this case by 43%. And then you designed your own home to be less than 57. And that involves many, many efficiency measures plus generally photovoltaics on the roof. And I didn't mention and when you put photovoltaics on the roof, the heat gain coming through is virtually zero because you're blocking the sun's radiation and it's being absorbed by the photovoltaic panel. So you have that added benefit of having a cool roof under there. Next slide, please. Oh, and in addition, when you put a new room on your existing house, that new space must comply as if with new construction. And then you also have the option while you're there of bringing the whole house into compliance and you don't get extra points for that. But you do ensure a very efficient home and something that didn't get into the new code was cool roofs where when you specify a new roof, the lighter the color of the roof, the more heat radiates off of the roof. And into the atmosphere. And that is an absolutely great way of reducing your energy consumption, having a healthier, happier home by not having the radiant heat coming through to you. Okay, very well. And we are offering training, full on training for the residential and commercial parts of the new energy code. If you're interested, we will have up on the link posted on the site right here and just follow that on and you will be entitled to this wonderful training tomorrow and Wednesday. Thank you very much.