 Good afternoon everyone, thanks for coming to the Sustainable Buildings Panel. This is our first panel and as you probably know, we're trying to run through these presentations. We wish we had a lot more time, but speakers have about seven minutes each. And I am with the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Ellen Vaughn, and I just want to say sustainable buildings are about how we put all these important pieces together. The pieces themselves are extremely important, but then how we put them together is important. There's no magic bullet, right? So we are delighted to have our speakers talk about their particular products and the first panel really is kind of about some of the systems and technologies, and then next we'll look at design and building envelope. So the first speaker is Greg Merritt. Greg is Vice President of Marketing and Public Affairs at Cree Lighting, and Greg will talk about better lighting and energy efficiency. Thanks, Ellen. So Cree, if you're not aware, is the headquarter in Durham, North Carolina, where the largest U.S.-based developer and supplier of LEDs and LED lighting products. We have about 4,000 employees in the U.S., mostly in North Carolina and Wisconsin, and we develop LED chips, packaged LEDs, LED products, LED bulbs. Hopefully maybe you've seen some of our ads if you're a college basketball fan, you may have. However, we are a global company. We also have operations in Asia and Europe, and we sell into about 75 countries around the world. We've also added about 1,500 employees in the U.S. since 2010. Thanks to many of you, hopefully. LED lighting. LED lighting is 40 to 80 percent more efficient than the traditional technologies that it replaces. It also lasts much longer without containing any hazardous materials such as mercury. Widespread adoption of LED lighting in this country can take about 10 percent of the electricity usage off the grid. That's a big number, by the way. However, at this point in the industry, the key is not necessarily the technology. The key is adoption. The most efficient LED lighting product that's not used is not saving any energy. So the challenge that we collectively face is to get more people to use more LED lighting. If we look at technologies in our society that have completely replaced the technologies that went before them, there's one simple reason why that's happened. It's because the new technology was better. When I say better, that doesn't necessarily mean by one measurement of technical performance, it means better in the eyes of the people that use it. Digital photography, digital music, streaming video, right? It's better. Purists may argue digital music's not better, but for those of us that use it, it is, right? Mostly because we can share it. But better is not in the eyes of the user, not the supplier, not even of the regulator. Therefore, as we look at energy efficient policy, especially related to lighting, or I would argue any other technology, we have to focus on the quality that customers experience in addition to just the energy savings. Otherwise, we'll end up with disappointed customers, and disappointed customers will not adopt the technology. Exhibit one would be the CFL. We already see manufacturers compromising the quality of the experience in the pursuit of a lower price. It's a bad idea. It will lead to disappointed customers, which means less adoption. Less adoption means less savings. It's very clear. There are some states and some organizations that have already recognized this. Those of you that work in California may have seen the recent Title 24 adoption. Significant focus on the quality of the lighting, quality of the dimming, et cetera. We strongly support that position. Energy Star is a very important standard and board blank. It's very important for us in terms of LED lighting adoption. We need to make sure we don't weaken that. Adoptions with drive savings to get to 100% adoption, the lighting needs to be better. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. Now we're going to go to the other side of the table, and I'm pleased to introduce Alex. I just did it, didn't I? We were just talking about this. Alex Rexrote, and Alex is Executive Director, Heat and Frost Insulators, Labor Management Cooperative Trust. He's going to talk about a very common sense strategy for saving energy. Hi, everybody. First of all, my name is Alex Rexrote. I've been in the mechanical insulation industry for about 55 years now. I was 18 years old when I first started. So I've been around this industry for a long time. I've watched the changes take place. The Labor Management Trust was created to market mechanical insulation. I have a question for everybody. How many of you know what mechanical insulation is? Show of hands. One person. Two. I'm sorry. Two. Mechanical insulation is a series of materials that are placed over mechanical services to either reduce heat loss or heat gain. The purpose of that is to save energy. So if you're not losing as much energy through your system or you're not using as much, your carbon footprint reduces automatically. It's just a function of those materials. Now, paybacks for fiberglass and steam piping can be on a low-pressure steam system six to eight months. On a heating hot water system, a 180-degree hot water system can be 18 to 24 months. Paybacks. And domestic water, which is 120 degrees, paybacks are 26 to 30 months. And everybody says, well, if it's so good, why aren't we doing it? Well, the fact is that the system functions with or without mechanical insulation. So what happens is that a hospital or a university or a building like this will go in and they'll maintain a piece of their system. They'll take off the old insulation. They will leave it off when they fix it, and it will run for the next five to seven years or 10 years or however long without insulation on it. It'll cost more money, the system will continue to function. The average hospital has, believe it or not, and this was a survey we did through the National Insulation Association, the average hospital has 13 miles of insulated pipe. The average hospital. So you take something like the University of Chicago Medical Center, where there are five buildings, or you take something like a little local community hospital. The point is that there are miles and miles of insulated piping. Department of Energy suggests that between 10 and 30% of the mechanical insulation that should be in place functioning is missing or damaged to the point that it's not functioning now. 10 to 30%. You take the low number, 13 miles of insulated pipe in a hospital, 10% of it is missing or damaged to the point it's not functioning. So that's over a mile of piping that should be insulated to save energy is not functioning. And so our argument is very simple. All we want to do is educate people about the need to perform mechanical insulation work in the United States and Canada. I represent 1,200 contractors and roughly 24,000 to 26,000 workers in the US and Canada. These folks are performing this work and we could do more if we just paid attention to the needs and if people paid attention and that's all our objective is. The other big objective of mine is, and I've been to the White House twice to discuss this issue. And that is that an energy policy in the United States has to be inclusive. It has to include solar and it has to include wind and it has to include fossil, whether we like it or not, we need that at least today for the energy we need. And if we're going to have to have fossil, let's use mechanical insulation properly to reduce that consumption and reduce that carbon footprint from those facilities. And that literally is our story and that's why we're doing that. Thank you. Thank you, Al. Yes, first, use less, right? That's the number one. And now we'll turn to Shayna Longo and Shayna is with La Grande, North America. La Grande has not only done some extraordinary initiatives in-house to reduce their own energy use and carbon footprint, they also are helping hospitals and other building owners do the same thing with a variety of products. So Shayna? Far away. Okay. Thanks, Ellen. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a summary about how La Grande prioritizes sustainable buildings. But first, you probably are not really familiar with who we are. You might know some of our brands such as Wattstopper, Pass and Seymour, Wiremold. We are a global company and here in North America we're roughly 1.2 billion. We make the products that provide the pathways and services to bring you your power light data and AV within your buildings. We also are one of our core competencies is in control and sensing. So we have major manufacturing facilities within the U.S. about 50% of our manufacturing is still here in the U.S. in states such as Connecticut, North Carolina, New Jersey and California. And we view our commitment to energy efficiency and sustainability as playing a really key role in allowing us to maintain competitive within the U.S. So as Ellen mentioned, I'm going to touch on a few things that we've done in-house and then talk about one of our customers who we've helped. We are a better building, better plant challenge member. The DOE relationship has been phenomenal. It's very supportive. The technical support that we've received through this program is absolutely invaluable. And one thing that was really important was in our most recent energy marathon, we conducted an internal competition between multiple sites and if you stop by our booth I actually have a toolkit that instructs you of how to do this in your own facilities where the sites competed against one another to reduce their energy intensity. And the winner was congratulated personally by the Department of Energy. The winner ended up being a small site in El Paso, Texas, one of our smallest. They achieved a 60% reduction in energy usage in 26.2 days. And we just found that absolutely phenomenal. I mean, if you could do it in 26.2 days, why couldn't you do it for the rest of the year? Overall, the company was able to achieve a 15% reduction just in those 26.2 days. And overall, we've, in our better, really better plant challenge, we've actually beat that challenge number, which is a 25% reduction in 10 years. We beat it in three and we achieved a 32% reduction to date. And we've recommitted. We decided that wasn't good enough, so we're going to try and do more. And so the energy marathon is one way that we're trying to engage our own occupants to reduce our energy. So we know that our customers are also really interested in this and we do provide them the solutions such as lighting controls and plug load controls that help them manage their own energy efficiency. But we also understand that it's beyond that. There's other performance needs that they have in their building such as hospitals. So one example is the recently renovated Parkland Hospital, which you're probably very familiar with the name. There was a 2.1 million square footage renovation that's set to open in late summer of this year. And we worked with them early on to develop mock-ups, so they didn't have to spend any money up front. They could build out a room and figure out where the problems might be, where there was opportunity for energy efficiency. And we found this to be a really cost-effective way to get involved early on and really be part of an integrated design process within a building. One thing that we found really interesting, when it came to the nurses, we had developed technology for their patient rooms to control their lighting and they have a variety of patients of writing stages of health. And we had originally proposed use of iPads to control the lighting within the rooms. We tested this with some local nurses, and they just found it too cumbersome. They were like, we can't use the iPads. It's too complicated. We're caring for this person's life, and we need to just be able to walk into a room, hit a switch intuitively, and the light that we need is going to turn on. So we actually worked with them to customly engrave a panel, and I have a picture of this back of the booth if you want to stop by, that showed different lighting options that the nurses could use within those rooms. So long story short, we know our customers that want it. We're doing it internally. We're really trying to encourage the high-performance building movement, and there's really four key policy aspects I want to touch on that are impacting and driving success in this movement. So the first is support for DOE programs. I encourage other manufacturers, if you're in the room, to engage with the DOE. They are a great technical resource, and those programs should be continued to be funded. The second, you know, tax reform is a kind of a buzz around Capitol Hill recently, and we are big supporters of 179D, the commercial building tax deduction, and not only have we taken advantage of this within our own facilities as we've improved our energy efficiency, but we've worked with customers who also do it on the lighting side as well. So continued renewal of that credit or the deduction is really important. Thirdly, when it comes to code, we are advocates, along with a lot of people or a lot of companies in our industry, for the three-year code adoption cycle. Technology is always changing, and we know that buildings need to keep up, so the code needs to be adopted consistently throughout the states, and the federal government can play a role in encouraging adoption of those codes. And the last point I'll make is a little bit more of a local and state policy. It's benchmarking and disclosure ordinances. So there are currently 16 cities across the U.S. that have adopted some version of a commercial benchmarking and disclosure ordinance. New York is one, Chicago, Boston. And what this is, it's really a sunshine clause. It is requiring buildings, commercial buildings, of a certain size to disclose their energy bills. And as the old saying goes, you really can't manage what you don't measure. So it's forcing companies to take a closer look at the energy that they're actually using. So anything that I touched on, I'd be happy to talk more at the booth, and we have published a lot of white papers and other information about this. So feel free to stop by and say hi. Thank you. Shannon, thank you so much. You covered a lot of ground with all those issues, and I'm so glad that you mentioned a lot of these things like codes and standards, and also, yeah, I would encourage people to go to your booth because I think you don't make the systems, you make the systems better, you make the products that make the building systems work. So you also talked about other performance goals, and it's so energy efficiency is one, if you make buildings too energy efficient without proper ventilation, we have problems with sick building syndrome. We have lots of things that are important with buildings, and Barry Stevens with Zender America is going to talk about his company's technology that is used often in passive house design, which are extremely energy efficient buildings, and then he paired with a system that ensures very good indoor air quality at the same time. Barry? Thank you. Yeah, I'm with Zender. It's one of those very old European companies that's based in Switzerland. We have factories in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. We also do have factories in Buffalo, New York, and Haverhill, Massachusetts. So we are manufacturing products here as well. And my part of the company is heat recovery ventilation. How many here know what heat recovery ventilation is? Thank you. So one of the things that is happening with energy efficient homes, everybody mostly knows about the basics are you add insulation and you seal them airtight. And if that's all you do, you end up with a box that sealed airtight and doesn't have air changes and ventilation. And this is an unintended consequence that is starting to become a real issue. And one of the things we talked about is codes and standards not keeping up with technology and with the advance of rushing headlong into making things energy efficient in homes and buildings. And as a result of that, you can have those unintended consequences of what we get with health issues. We've been trying to work with spray foam manufacturers because they go in and they spray foam a home, air seal it up tight. And some of you may have heard that the spray foam industry is under the gun because people are blaming the spray foam or the chemicals for indoor air quality issues. In a lot of cases, that's not the problem. The problem is you sealed the house up tight and you haven't provided ventilation. So what our company does and what you've got in Passive House Catrine and I'll be talking in the next round with Passive House Institute U.S. but one of the prescriptive points in a Passive House is whole house balanced ventilation. And it's a really critical element to moving forward on energy efficiency both for the heat recovery ventilation side is recovering energy of the exhaust air that you're blowing out and heating in the wintertime, for example, the air coming in so that the air is fairly close to the same temperature as the air that's going out by the time they pass through a heat exchanger. But the key is to provide that fresh air throughout the house in a known method rather than what's now which is kind of a hit or miss. For example, using just exhaust bath fans to depressurize a house. You're getting rid of moisture out of the bathroom, you hope, but you don't know where your makeup air is coming from. So, for example, a bedroom, you have no idea how much air you're getting in the bedroom. It may be coming through the front door or through the basement or through a crawl space and that's generally not where you want to pull your fresh air from. Crawl spaces don't generally have fresh air in them. So, these are all critical issues as we go forward. We've been working across the whole country and in Canada as well. I could talk about a lot of really exciting stuff that's going on with everything from habitat for humanity homes that are employing this type of technology to high-end homes, schools, offices, small commercial projects. But it's improving the indoor air quality and health of the occupants tremendously. And when we're talking about energy efficiency and building energy efficient buildings, one of the things that's kind of an unacknowledged benefit is increased comfort and health of the occupants. You know, we're seeing anecdotal evidence of schools where we put dedicated systems into each classroom with a CO2 sensor. And it's triggered by occupancy of the kids coming in the school. So, when the classroom is empty, the ventilation doesn't run or it runs on a very low level. And as the classroom fills up, it increases the ventilation to provide fresh air. And anecdotally, the kids, especially in afternoons, the teachers are reporting that the kids are more attentive. And we've seen it's too short of time to totally measure, but we are seeing improved performance in school. In a couple of schools where they're monitoring that in California. So, this type of thing is really kind of the untalked about aspect of energy efficient homes buildings is making sure that you don't have unintended consequences and that you have healthy, comfortable buildings as well as energy efficient buildings. Mary, thank you so much. And another benefit is the cost of energy. So, energy efficiency can be a real driver to enable you to do these other things to make sure that you provide for these other benefits. So, thank you so much. And I think we actually are, could we possibly be running ahead of schedule now? We can have questions. So, please feel free to ask questions of this wonderful panel. I have a question, but I do have a comment with regard to what you were saying. Rush Hospital in Chicago did virtually the same thing you were talking about doing. I'm sorry. And they did basically the same thing when they were designing that new hospital. They laid out that entire facility floor by floor in tennis courts and brought in the nurses and the doctors who were going to use the facility and found out exactly where they wanted all these little items that we wouldn't normally think about. Where do they want the calls? Where do they want the oxygen? Where do they want all these things? And I was just fascinated by that whole operation and hearing you talk about it brought all that back to me. It really is outstanding. Yeah, I think that the way of building now is really going towards that integrated process. You know, all the stakeholders need to be involved right off the bat because that's how you're going to get the performance that you're seeking. Yes, sir. I don't have a question either. I have a comment. I think it's been very reassuring to hear so many people with positive ideas about important ideas and experience about more efficient use of energy. And one of the things, though, as a social scientist, I tend to look for some other sources of information apart from the physical scientists and the engineers as important as they are. And those are behavior. For example, my wife and I in retirement moved to Washington about 25 years ago, about 20 years ago. And it's a wonderful place. We like it very much. And we didn't want to have a car and we haven't had a car. We do a lot of walking. We use public transport. And as a demographer by area specialization, I do a lot of counting and a lot of walking. And I have to count the cars that have, you know, what proportion of the cars that I see at different times of the day in Washington have more than one person in them. In other words, a passenger in addition to the driver. And, you know, it's very rare that you get more than 10%. That's a lot of introduction of material to climate change. It's not very healthful. It's very expensive. It takes up a lot of room and things of that sort. Another is that people knowing I live in Washington often say, well, how can you stand those terrible summers, the heat of the summer? And, you know, I have to be honest with them. They say, you know, it's not the heat of the summer. It's the cold indoors in the summer. And for a while I was carrying a little thermometer around with me. And I'm not kidding. In the middle of August, in the Shakespeare theater, when women at least would be likely, if they didn't know, would be likely to wear lightweight clothing and so on, I recorded temperatures of 55 degrees Fahrenheit. When I come to a thing like this, I always put on a tie and a coat because I know I'm going to be cold otherwise. Now, I think we could save a lot of money just thinking in terms of human behavior rather than only, as important as it is, only in terms of efficient use of energy. We might not use nearly as much energy as we're using. Try that for a while. Thank you for that because someone just, I just was in this discussion the other day with someone about that very issue. And I think they've said 25% this behavior, 25% of the, some of the energy, any efficiency can be attributed absolutely. The Google bought Nest thermostat, you may know. Paid a couple billion dollars for it. Are you familiar with the Nest thermostat? It's programmable and it records information and kind of tracks your... Well, Google also, what they bought was data. And they've been taking a lot of thermostats and taking and pooling that data. And recently, a gentleman that works for Google now used to be in the building science industry in a big way. He had a report at the ACI conference in New Orleans about that. And so when you're talking about over-cooling and so forth, they're breaking that down. And as we get into more data and collect more data on this, you can start to improve dramatically the energy used and wasted. People air conditioning their home when nobody's home and on and on. So as we get into more automated and data-driven controls, that will be a significant impact on wasted energy, I think. You alluded to just exactly that. This lighting, we have the technology, we have the lighting. We have all of these things available. Now we have to get people to use it. And that's exactly what I say. We've had mechanical insulation around the U.S. market for over 100 years. And now we have to get people to start recognizing the need to use this technology to save the energy. And that's the key to all of this, is getting people to change the way we do things. You are right on, sir. One of his essays, George Orwell, writing in the 1930s, I think, was that long ago, spoke of the tyranny of the machine. The tyranny of the machine is if there's a machine around, you have to use it, no matter what it's doing. You have to do that thing that it can do, and you have to use it to do that thing. And I think we are living in an age when a great deal of the capitalist system rests on getting people to become tyrannized by the machine. Well, you have the last word, sir, on that. That's good, yes. We don't want to let technology get too far ahead of us. So public education and good policies that many of you are working on are needed to really encourage more sustainable building. Please help me welcome and thank, sorry, thank our panel today. Thank you so much. And I hope you'll stay around for the next panel that is coming up. And really what we're looking at are design issues and envelope issues that all come together with technologies and equipment in a whole building approach. And that's what really can help us save energy and meet some of these other important goals for acoustical quality, indoor air quality, safety and health. So thank you, and we'll have our next panel in just a minute.