 and welcome to our panel today on can housing be affordable, resilient and sustainable. Now for any of you who are working on any one of the components of this, you know that it's very complicated and there are many things underway many wonderful programs and also much to do. So I first would like to acknowledge all the work that's being done on affordable housing resiliency and sustainability. I also want to turn the microphone back in just a minute and very much thank you to Andrew Kowalski and his staff for all of his help with this great thing for us which is so helpful that I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew I don't know about a year ago and we talked about a lot of these issues and I just really appreciate that you are doing on this and the congressman's leadership on these issues as a member of the House Committee on Financial Services and Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance. You're touching some of the most critical issues that we're facing today in terms of affordable housing, energy efficiency in that role, excuse me, efficiencies role in affordable housing and and financing and many other issues. So what I would like to do is welcome the congressman to, I know he's busy and perhaps would like to say a few words and then I will introduce the panel but one thing I did want to say is that what what we have here today is really an amazing group of panelists because given the issues that we're facing the complexities of these issues and the fact that yes there are barriers that still are out there that need to be resolved but you know what folks these folks are making it happen these people the Trin, Kalingenburg from Pesov House Institute is designing low energy buildings, know how buildings work, Orlando Velez applying this to affordable housing in DC through Habitat for Humanity, Nicole Steele applying solar technologies on affordable homes. So this is all about bringing it together and I see some folks from the High Performance Building Coalition that are working on this it's all about bringing these issues together so while any one of these things is very difficult we can have better luck if we figure out where those synergies are and how to bring them all together so we'll talk more about that I'll introduce our panelists but again I would like to welcome Congressman Hines from Connecticut to say a few words and thank you again for all that you're doing. Well thank you all and thank you all for being here today I thought I might just create a little bit of context with a little bit of a bias towards what's happening here or not happening here in terms of in terms of sustainable and resilient and affordable housing but the answer to that question is yes it can it must be it better be you know I represent Fairfield County Connecticut we got hammered in Sandy right and of course just south of us is New York City and Staten Island and Long Island and of course there's nothing particular to the northeast with respect to weather events and we don't get a lot more serious about thinking about both sustainability and resiliency we will waste a lot of money the answer to this is yes I know because before I got into this business I was an executive enterprise community partners some of you will be familiar with enterprise with LISC it's one of the kind of key intermediaries for the low-income house of tax credit in particular working with community based organizations with the tax credit to try to build affordable housing and yes at some level it's complicated at some level it's not in the sense that you know particularly in places where you're not building Greenfield in the Lower East Side of New York or in Baltimore or in Philadelphia where you're probably rehabbing housing stock that could be anywhere between 30 and 100 years old you almost can't help but build more sustainably but build more affordably than what was there in the Lower East Side I used that example because we would take a 12-unit tenement that was built a hundred years ago and coal was pennies per ton and therefore insulated just the way you might imagine it would be insulated and without any fancy lead rebuilding without any fancy stuff just making some very basic changes we could cut the energy consumption by that of that structure by as much as 60% that of course is a cost savings which depending on the affordability program you're talking about in many cases gets conveyed to through to a lower income family savings on on on their monthly cash flow and of course it can be healthier and I don't suspect to tell people in the room that when you're talking about communities of poverty you're talking about high concentrations of asthma and other environmentally related health effects so yes it can be and way it better it's one of those few win-win wins out there where you can actually reduce people's expenses improve their health model model the kinds of building techniques that will allow other developers and other construction people to actually take a look at what it is that you have done and then and then do that and you know one of the I wish I could strike an optimistic note about what you're likely to see out of the US Congress with respect to a real meaningful commitment to moving the ball forward here I can't do that the single most important vehicle we probably had for pushing energy efficiency sustainability that should be important bill which some of you will be familiar of course never made it out of the Senate I don't see any reason to believe that there's going to be a big push after January to prioritize that that is sad but two things are less that one is an awful lot of the stuff of course is happening quite apart from what we may or may not do step twirling here you know the sustainable communities initiative that HUD the kinds of thinking that HUD is doing in terms of you know trying to first time really blend the concept of communities and and place and sustainability with the old let's build affordable housing mandate I think it's really very hopeful what individual communities cities and towns are doing with respect to inclusionary zoning giving points for sustainability there's just really good news and good things happening there's private developers my favorite example of Jonathan Rose those of you who know the northeast will know Jonathan Rose you know people private developers who are really profoundly committed to sustainability for all the reasons that I'm outlined here so the good news is even though you're not going to see a ton of leadership a ton of momentum out of the US Congress on this issue good things are happening in my sense is that you know there's a role for everybody we will those of us who care about sustainability and affordability and resilience we will continue to push ideas that will move the ball forward everything from you know giving points for the award of tax credits for you know the inclusion of sustainable technologies and building techniques to you know pilot programs that would that would demonstrate hopefully make underwriters credit underwriters more comfortable with the idea of operating savings associated with with reduced energy expenditures and in our built environment now just one slightly optimistic note with respect to the hill this is not efficiency is actually not it's not keystone it's not the war on coal it's not the really angry partisan side of things you know you you you will be hard-pressed in the vast ideological spectrum that exists in this institution to find people who will say it's a terrible idea to promote efficiency so one big question of course is what does you know what does the new uh what does the new senate majority leader mitch mcconnell do you know i'm i'm going to take him at his word he's going to look for areas of common ground which he said sort of after the election this should be one and i'll just close with this notion it should be one of them again it's not keystone it's not the war on coal it's not all of those highly partisan highly charged political debates this is efficiency it's really hard to argue with and therefore and this is my concluding hope and and perhaps uh request to you all um keep up the emphasis because i um i would tell you that uh that there's really no reason why the hill should be stalled uh on these issues um again as as some of the anger and the partisanship leads out maybe we can find room for uh for a more kind of 21st century commitment to uh to the statutory change will allow us to do um you know nationally and with the scope of the federal government we're seeing communities and states and municipalities so keep up the advocacy and the 535 offices on the hill and of course in the state houses and in the municipalities uh out there and i think even though uh you know none of us really enjoyed watching what happened to chicane portman and you know other initiatives i i i think there's a possibility for for moving this forward uh with enough that i can see so uh thank you uh i guess i'll just join and now you know why the efi like to let our panelists and our experts speak for the issues this is actually our 30th year of bringing briefings to a couple of mills and trying to bring the experts and the science to all the making um so uh thank you for understanding for those remarks and a very positive message um yes that's that's what we want you to come away with that this absolutely can be done um and uh so on that note and i should mention also that uh i'm seeing a lot of uh leveraging so with the HUD programs and the money that um the uh funding that does come from HUD for public housing i think we're seeing a lot of innovation including from folks on the panel in leveraging that money and that is very important today that's a message that i think resonates on both sides of the aisle and it's certainly the savings that come with energy efficiency that can allow us to do other things like resiliency more green features um i think it all goes hand in hand so uh to get on with the show um i'm real pleased to introduce our first panelist katranny klingeberg is co-founder and executive director of pacifals institute u.s. um he has promotes the adoption of pacifals building principles in north america many of you may have heard of the german pacifals uh standard um katranny is working uh with uh experts here or board and with permanent energy and enrel and others to um adapt that standard to the u.s. climate which is you know it's different than in germany we have a lot of hot and humid areas that need um to be cooling and dehumidification um so pacifals institute u.s. is doing training of uh building professionals and train the trainer program so that really can scale this up is what we uh what we have is really the probably the most rigorous uh methodology or standard for reducing energy use in buildings reducing that load and building uh buildings in the u.s. use about 40 percent of our total energy use 70 percent of the electricity um pacifals really is getting that um heating cooling energy use way way down so that um other uh things like solar technologies can be added cost effectively and we're really getting to that net zero or near net zero uh ready buildings so in 2003 uh katranny designed and built the first home uh that met the pacifals building energy standard in the united states she's designed and consulted on numerous pacifals projects and served as an instructor she's a licensed architect in germany and thank you so much for for being here pacifals in chicago so i'm glad you made it here to take me down today please um i'd like to uh start with uh expressing my gratitude to you for arranging this today and bringing this topic to everyone's attention and thank you congressman for uh showing your leadership and hosting this briefing um this is really uh kind of like the concept of the briefing was to showcase that the technology really is here as the congressman said yes we can do this it is housing is affordable resilient and sustainable today and uh the three speakers that you're going to hear are here uh are chosen with like a plan in mind um i'd like to present the pacifals building part the building science and quality assurance we're bringing that to the table um we call uh is bringing to the table the renewable side of things so pacifals building is kind of focusing more on the conservation side of things renewables are focusing on the generation side and then orlando with habitat who has been an incredible leader in uh moving all this forward you will see that you will present on a project that was one of the very first demonstration projects that put all these pieces together the conservation piece of pacifal building standards extra low uh energy consumption to begin with as a base line for zero energy then of course they couldn't stop there they had to push it uh to the next level and they added uh zero energy to their project and they also made it a beautiful design and said oh there's locality and washroom you might have seen it so uh with that a few words to uh the uh passive uh house institute us we actually started out originally as a housing developer uh very early on and that's how we built the first group of concept homes uh in obana illinois and uh that was interestingly also the place where pacifals actually uh was born if you will a lot of folks think it actually happened in germany but that was already the second round of passive building development uh the first time around all the principles were actually already uh discovered it's not really uh more so uh it's not really discovering the principles that are defining them and they were defined in the department of energy brands in the 70s and 80s as a response to the energy crisis so as uh the pastor of the city of us uh we are doing uh certification and training and we're bringing to the table the quality assurance piece it's a simple concept but it's important that you do it right that you have a concept of uh employing all these techniques and principles and to illustrate that i'd like to talk quickly a little bit about the passive building uh metrics and the principles uh then about a little bit about the work that we're doing currently with the department of energy really finding those data from North America uh alluding to that uh a little bit for various climates uh quickly i'll show you a few multi-family projects uh passive building it's a moving force into the multi-family sector right now and there's some great news to tell about that we have now about seven fully certified projects in our country which is excellent and most of them are affordable on the good side of things as well and then i quickly just a summary uh to highlight the benefits of um dialing in to the space line of conservation for you at all right um you are probably all familiar with the statistics um the chance of energy consumption that the United States is contributing to worldwide uh use of energy and how that breaks out in terms of commercial residential and industrial and uh there we see very quickly that buildings have a huge potential to reduce uh energy consumption overall and uh this is a slight idea that uh it's already a few years old but i think it's still not true it's actually uh put out and published by uh the Shell Corporation and uh it is uh looking ahead to uh almost uh well and to the end of the century really they're not just looking until like 2030 they have a very long range view and uh they're saying like yeah okay our resources are dwindling in terms of cost of fuel so we need to come up with alternatives and that's really not a bad thing that's really a good thing uh we have quite a bit of potential here for renewables but those are somewhat limited um they're uh this is what the cost associated with it resources are limited so what they are expecting is that the chance of energy that will come from conservation that will have to come from conservation will grow as the worldwide energy demand goes as well and uh you can see right here that this uh that over the course of the century they expect the fossil fuel resources to um kind of go down and be replaced by renewables and conservation and that is Shell that is uh that is an energy company yes they are looking forward so quickly to put this in perspective uh passive building is a essentially the equivalent to the miles per gallon for buildings the energy consumption per square foot of living area conditioned floor area and uh how does that compare so the first energy standards are started in 75 uh compared to that we see of course a very drastic reduction but then also all the other energy efficiency programs that we have energy star the IECC 2012 and the DOE challenge home energy star version 3 actually now it's called zero energy ready home um even compared to this very high level high performance home program of the department of energy passive has still offers a great reduction here like with 65 percent of total energy use and that is significant now very quickly the the principles here I don't have to go into like the actual nuts and bolts and building signs of things but the principles are not rocket science this is very simple kind of very reasonable measures that some of them might still look familiar to you from the early days of passive solar homes and so on and so forth but of course now this time around um they have been uh more optimized and uh in fact the passive solar portion of things is playing a way lesser role than it used to be the first time around it's a more optimized system of all of these different components which are continuous insulated envelopes minimizing thermal bridges airtight construction uh constant fresh air supply um managing internal loads and once you have done all that correctly you have maximized your conservation your potential then you look at very efficient technologies like heat pumps and so on and so forth solar thermal hot water generation or a geothermal uh and then once all that is optimized then you add your solar system to generate your own uh energy and by now that system is a very affordable system and that's of course like that's then the next frontier we don't want to stop at zero we want to overproduce like uh we want to make take the next step uh not only to a sustainable energy economy but to a positive energy economy we want to overproduce um this is uh just a quick snapshot of kind of like uh how we verify if a building actually meets those criteria i don't have to bore you with the exact numbers they are very stringent a very simple uh process uh that then kind of shows very quickly does the building meet those criteria or not not so they are their modeling tools that do that for us uh and with that quickly a few words to the cost optimization that we are working on currently with the department of energy so in here i have it right uh zero energy home uh ready uh program from the DOE uh we have been partnering with the department of energy since 2012 and in 2013 we were awarded a um a grant building science corporation building america partner and we came in as an industry partner to uh redesign those passive standards which initially we started to use the european standards and that was a very specific very moderate climate and as we were uh applying those standards in the us over the last 10 years we've been doing this 10 plus years now we started having some uh unintended consequences occurring and we had to adjust for that as ellen mentioned their additional complexities like uh cooling requirement humidity and so on so forth and also the building science of wall assemblies as soon as there's moisture involved now uh another program we have uh developed a very stringent uh quality assurance process that delivers these projects that is very important it's it's a simple concept again but uh you need to do it right and there's a method to uh to applying these uh principles correctly um our certification program combines design verification as well as on-site verification so that you make sure that uh what was specified during the design process is actually happening on-site because that building is designed with such such precision uh some small uh mistakes might in the end make a big difference like for example what if the wrong installation material had been delivered and they just installed it and they didn't pay any attention that can make a big difference now over the last uh couple years we've seen uh a nice development and certifications uh you can see right here the hockey stick developing that we have always been hoping for but also have been fearing a little bit because like what what happens of that all of a sudden really grows and takes off and it really looks like uh we are now seeing this kind of like part of the curve where within a couple years we could have like thousands of units and uh quite frankly these are only the sort of certified projects there are quite a few more out there not everybody goes for certification it's voluntary and uh these numbers also include um multi-family buildings so the multi-family buildings with 60s 70 80 units they don't show up as units they show up as a building so if we account the fully certified projects all the units and then in addition we have about like 200 more in the certification phase we're probably already at about like a thousand units and that's certified not even counting the units that are that are being built like on their own so that's that's a great success story for for 10 years and it clearly shows that the training has shown success and that people do take those principles that they learn and they go out there and they build these prototype homes and their communities um the department of energy or work with them of course so that relates back to standard adaptation making the standard more fitting to the north american context construction costs and energy prices what we found applying the european standard was that one standard fits all pushed kind of like the application of installation in some climates way beyond the point of return for for the investment and you would find yourself actually somewhere up in here if you tried to use the european standard in in certain climates and that's not the point right we don't want to waste resources we want the right amount the cost effective amount of conservation first so another study that i mentioned earlier building america program with building science corporation and department of energy we developed new climate specific standards and they're going to be released here very soon now that takes me very quickly just to a couple glimpses for you to look at the projects that are in the works right now and again great leadership has been shown here by a few community housing development organizations one of them is action housing in pittsburgh and they have been a great leader they jumped right in in 2012 they're already done with one uh s ro development single room occupancy retrofit 80 some units that one is fully occupied by now and then this is their latest project 24 unit development for foster children when they once they move out of the home they they get their own apartments and these are really excellent buildings this is actually close to being finished now they are using very nice materials here as well this is a this is a very nice project if you're ever in pittsburgh i encourage you go and and see this project uh other developments on on the way uh portland oregon now a different climate here uh this is a uh a development which is built to market rate this is an 18 uh unit building and um this is a building in new york city that recently got a lot of press uh was mentioned in the one city report that mayor de blasio put out uh this is the nicker book of a bocker project architect chris benedict right here uh very nice as well 24 units i believe these are all certified and they are meeting the passive standards uh and then just a quick few words to policy and what we are seeing developing around the country and in the world uh believe it or not belgium uh was crazy enough to actually say a few years ago yes we're going to make this code in like 2015 beginning this coming year every single building even retrofits will have to meet the standard and uh that is quite a challenge um they are tackling it head on uh i don't necessarily see that method working in the united states so i think uh what we need is some nice carrots and more like a consumer driven uh market transformation but that's just an example how belgium uh dealt with that topic and on that note i don't have a slide in here because we don't have limited time here in uh in the u.s uh the pennsylvania um housing finance agency in september decided to award 10 extra points to passive house projects so right now in their application process for light tech for low income housing tax credits they have a whole bunch of developers all of a sudden looking at passive house and they're all trying to meet the standard because they want these extra points now that might be a little bit premature but that's an example of how um how this could work how we could incentivize this without having to come with a with a stick we just basically put out the carrot and a quick summary um so uh of the various measures that building that can drive a building performance towards net zero it seems that passive measures are indeed the most desirable uh we have seen that these principles are applicable everywhere they're applicable to all building types residential commercial as well as multifamily as well as retrofits and uh we have uh additional benefits uh to just the energy efficiency side of things and maybe those are even more important uh one of them is resiliency resiliency in terms of uh kind of like climate uh occurrences but also cost of living uh less energy costs we have increased comfort and health um so those are all aspects that play into this type of construction and last but not least we have also learned our lesson uh this is a highly climate specific uh kind of uh principle and uh but once we calibrated based on the climate and based on the energy cost and the construction cost we can actually dial it in and we can make it the sweet spot between supply and demand and from that jumping point off we can go onto uh zero energy and then positive energy generation in our buildings so yes it's here it's possible thank you thank you katrin she makes it sound so easy doesn't she but actually it uh it is a matter of uh good building science good building practices and so we're feeling positive that we'll be able to scale this up um the department of housing and urban development hud defines affordable housing as that which uh is not more than 30 percent of one's income and uh so when you think about uh building to a greater degree of quality and efficiency and other performance measures we we have to think okay how do we how do we make this happen um with that constraint and some people are even challenging whether that's appropriate given the cost of childcare or health care food you know the the definition really is based on uh using housing what you need uh uh you don't want to spend too much on housing so you can't get those other necessities um but given transportation costs um you know location uh where you live accessibility to uh services that's that all factors in so um we are uh very delighted that some people are tackling these these uh these issues and trying to get good quality into affordable housing um so I'm delighted to introduce Orlando Velez director of housing programs and community advocacy for Habitat for Humanity DC who is really putting these uh concepts into practice um Orlando has uh received his degree in architecture from Kansas State University joined the Peace Corps and served in Paraguay uh he worked for a small municipality and directed many projects uh and then after the Peace Corps attended uh Milano the new school for international affairs management urban policy analysis so he's uh he was working on his graduate degree in urban policy and uh was asked to work for uh for the university as director of operations for the Empowerhouse project and Empowerhouse with uh a team was the Empowerhouse project was the winning entry in uh DOE solar decathlon in 2011 so that was then the segue uh to DC Habitat for Humanity and uh you began working of manager of housing services so I will let you tell the rest of the story thank you thank you so much um I would like to thank Ellen again uh for and everyone here and especially the panel and the congressmen for uh coming here today and letting us have this great discussion on how housing can actually be resilient uh sustainable and also be affordable um as Ellen did mention I was working with uh the new school uh on the project called the Empowerhouse we did win uh most affordable house which was our goal uh we were very excited to win that and take that from the solar decathlon competition uh we also won a couple other awards from the competition uh we won the best lighting design and best hot water design it's actually a competition which is really an ingenious uh and then uh then when we brought it back to DC we actually won an award DC 2012 mayor's sustainability award but I get to that in the moment um so a little bit about Habitat for Humanity in Washington DC I'm sure everyone here has come out to volunteer right um so we're a developer uh construction company and a mortgage servicing provider as well as well as social servicing agency here in the district we are only the DC Habitat affiliates so we have many affiliates throughout the country we work we have about we even have overseas affiliates so about 80 countries outside of the US have the Habitat affiliates we've been established since 1988 in the district and working with over 200 families in over 4 000 volunteers we've partnered with hundreds if not close to thousands of schools nonprofits other agencies community groups churches and other organizations including corporations and other nonprofits so what is affordable housing here in DC so I'm going to focus a little bit about DC itself so in 2014 this year actually real estate business intelligence stated that DC's median sales price is five hundred thousand dollars uh that's a six and a half percent change increase from last year uh so obviously five hundred thousand dollars is not affordable to many uh definitely not to me uh the AMI or the area median income for a family of four in DC which is calculated by HUD in DC it's a hundred seven thousand dollars for a family of four uh Habitat actually works with families earning 30 to 60 percent of the area median income so we work well below that and this is a home ownership program we don't rent the properties these buyers actually purchase the homes and they own it including the land in DC we did a study Habitat did a study in 2013 nearly 20 percent of DC families are at poverty level and half at DC households are actually paying 30 percent or more of their income on rent and of that half 20 percent are paying 50 percent more on rent as Alan had mentioned according to HUD pay more than 30 percent of your gross monthly income on housing is actually considered a burden uh so a quick math sorry to do this to you guys of how we make this affordable and how the Habitat can actually do this builds be building more because we're constantly growing uh and service the population so in this case we have a house at 270 thousand dollars and we have to keep the debt to income ratios so that's the 30 percent of the gross monthly income uh that cannot go toward that goes towards housing costs and then there's a back end which includes all your other housing or other costs such as your credit card payments or student loans habitat we work with third trust programs and second trust programs so in DC we have a program for first time home buyers which is called the home purchase assistance program right there the h-pad program and that's a loan to the buyer that's up to 40 thousand dollars right now it's zero percent interest the third one is actually the most unique for DC it's called the housing production trust fund and there are many other funds pot of funds but in this case we actually have this is a real life project and this is a real life third trust so the housing production trust fund comes from the department of housing community development here in DC the DHCD and it's actually monies that's captured through through DC's deed and recordation and transfer taxes and is used for home ownership or rental for low income or moderate income uh DC residents this money is our financing gap as well so we're able to take this we're able to fundraise for the construction costs of let's say a typical house and then get that additional gap from local funds funding sources like the housing production trust fund and build this to a passive house standard and not burden the cost on to the buyer themselves because they also capture a piece of that funding from the developer that's given to the developer by the housing production trust fund and it's recaptured back into the buyer so now the buyer can use this third loan of 60 thousand dollars at zero percent interest and it's non amortized so the key here too is to keep this house affordable so there is in under the housing production trust fund this home has to be affordable for a period of 15 years so the owner can't just sell it and flip it this particular house actually is we didn't appraisal it's worth 400 thousand dollars so the owner can't actually just take that house and then sell at a market rate they have to sell it for the same area median income they were in when they bought it that's for 15 years it's a covenant that goes with the property so we have to make sure that the front end all this math the property taxes insurance and paying back the debts is less than 30 percent of this buyer's gross monthly income and this is somebody at 50 percent of the area median income so they're earning about 53 thousand dollars a year so in DC we did a study as well on energy costs in northeast DC where we were building uh we found out that on average uh energy costs the homeowner about 2300 dollars a year so roughly 191 200 a month uh in just heating and cooling loads in heating and cooling uh both energy electric and gas so if we add on a passive house that saves us almost 1900 dollars a year bringing it down to 480 dollars a year in just energy costs for the homeowner and we could take that to the next level so we're using this the housing production trust fund to get to this level as a developer and the buyer is using that as well to get to purchase the property and with grid we're actually able to get to the next level now so we're actually able to go into site net zero and that's zero utility costs for the homeowner so that's saving about 200 dollars a month and this is where we did it so we were the first developer in the district of Columbia to do a passive house project we actually did two this was the project that Ellen was talking about briefly about this was the entry to the solar decathlon to 2011 solar decathlon so in this case our third trust although it wasn't housing production trust fund it was actually habitat during that third note land was also given to us or sold to habitat through DHCD department of housing community development uh at a low cost I think it was about a dollar of course there were covenants with that as well such as the 15 year resale restriction so the house maintains affordable for 15 years if they ever choose to sell it so it's through that partnership between the local government agencies and DC habitat that were able to build these homes this is just an inside photo of the home when it was actually on the national mall and then here are the mechanical systems so these homes are very air tight super well insulated their passive house built standard homes so we have an energy recovery ventilating system here that brings in the fresh air from the outside and then filters it with the air from the inside exchanges the heat the hot water heater and then here are the solar panels to actually bring it up to that next level and if you don't believe me this is the owner's bill so the owner used to pay about $200 a month now she's paying this is the most expensive bill she has 30 bucks going from $200 to $30 a month that's a huge savings and we look at it I did a little bit math that I did not want to bore you with on the slide but a little bit math from this actually this owner I want to add too we are working we worked and we're still working with the local housing authority agency DCHA to get families from their family self-sufficiency program the FSS program that uses the home choice voucher the section eight rental voucher and then converts it to home ownership voucher through that program and get them moved into one of these passive houses so the idea is that and it actually came true the idea is that the homeowner's utility bills and the housing payments would be so low they will no longer need that voucher and this actually did come true this homeowner moved in about a year ago and since October they did not need that voucher so that's actually saving and recycling that voucher to a new participant because vouchers are no longer there's a huge waiting list so now it's freeing up more vouchers to more potential homeowners so if this buyer this homeowner and saves and pays down their mortgage their first trust mortgage which is the bank loan $180 a month paying it down they'll actually pay off the mortgage in 21 years instead of 30 years and save about $50,000 just in interest costs alone that's a huge savings for somebody who's actually in 43 percent of the AMI so currently we decided to habitat DCHA habitat is taking this to the next level and we're using the housing production trust funds to bring that to the next level we're actually building six passive houses here in DC in a neighborhood called Ivy City in two different phases phase a and phase b and what you here see here this is Central Avenue if anybody knows DC a little bit and then here is phase a and in this phase we actually did we were able to partner with grid alternatives to take this to the next level of site net zero so in these homes although they're sold for $270,000 we're still hitting a lower AMI because of that housing production trust fund because of that connection that partnership with the local housing authority excuse me the local housing and community development and as well as with the local housing authority in finding buyers so a family buying one of these properties will actually just pay about $838 a month on their first trust mortgage so it's financing about $169,000 at today's interest rate of 4.3 if they once we put in we put in the solar panels and they're saving on that average of $200 a month paying down the mortgage 200 extra dollars a month they're saving about $50,000 again and going to pay that mortgage off in 21 years instead of 30 and that's where we're at thank you thank you Orlando so it sounds like to scale this up we just need to clone you and have you do all these complicated financing deals everywhere that's very impressive thank you so much and a great segue to Nicole Steele at grid alternatives which is I call it and I'm sorry if this is not you'll just correct me if I'm wrong but it's sort of like habitat for humanity with solar I mean you're doing it's a similar model in terms of volunteers and and making this work for affordable housing so it's it's a wonderful program innovative program and you just open this year around the United States I think in California is maybe the home office and this office just opened in the mid-Atlantic and Nicole is executive director and you prior to this were with the Alliance to Save Energy and so energy efficiency then solar goes together as a system and so Nicole has over 10 years of experience in environmental and energy issues in urban planning grassroots advocacy policy development and other disciplines and then you were also the director of the efficiency energy efficiency and conservation block grant program which was part of the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act era the stimulus program and that was for Loudoun County Virginia so that that's really where the rubber hits the road designing commissioning implementing 12 separate energy related projects ranging from capital improvements to feasibility studies and education and so I will maybe stop there so you can actually talk so welcome Nicole thank you thank you Ellen and thank you EESI for having us and letting us answer this question again yes we can make housing resilient and affordable and sustainable I also want to thank the congressman even though he's not here we recently opened an office in New York that covers Connecticut so we're very excited for possibilities up there in the New England area as well so essentially yes we are a habitat for humanity a la solar we are a nonprofit solar installer that works exclusively with low income communities we do go up to 80 percent of area median income so that's a little bit higher than habitat standards but obviously we partner with habitat around the countries we have very very strong partnership in all of the areas that we have offices our sort of big large-picture mission is that we want to make sure that clean renewable energy is accessible to everyone so while we are a nonprofit solar installer we're here to be the go-to for making our new clean energy economy equitable and diverse so with that I will figure out how to use this thing okay so we were founded by Eric Mackey and Tim Sears in Oakland California that was about 10 years ago and we've been incredibly successful across the state of California because of state level incentive programs that essentially great alternatives implements for the state of California so it's called the sash program we started piloting that in 2004 and we have seven offices across the state of California but about two years ago Wells Fargo came to us and said you know we're really interested in what you're doing we like your workforce development model so the other thing that we sort of add on to the volunteer habitat model is that we also do job training and that it's very important to the mission of grid and making sure that we're able to funnel us people through us into a skilled workforce so we're able to partner with those types of organizations around the country as well so anyway Wells Fargo saw this happen and said let's figure out how to make this work outside of the state of California so two years ago we opened an office in Colorado one year ago we opened an office in New York that covers New York New Jersey and Connecticut and just this past September we opened an office here in the Mid-Atlantic that's physically located here in DC but we cover DC Maryland Delaware and Virginia we kind of recall this office our showcase office because it is here in Washington DC and we want to be able to have this conversation on a national level so we made a call for a national low-income solar policy when we opened our office here in DC in September what does that look like we don't know we've been doing this for 10 years and we're very creative about the way we finance the systems but I think really the next step is continuing to figure out how to be creative and finance the systems and making sure that it is accessible to everyone so like I said we are a full-service nonprofit contractor serving qualifying low low-income homeowners we do a lot of pieces of the puzzle so we're not necessarily just the installer we do client outreach so we go into the communities and determine who would be eligible for the installs and who really needed would benefit the most from the installations themselves you know we talked a little bit about energy efficiency earlier you know the big statement coming from the Alliance of Save Energy who's for wasting energy and I mean obviously that's step number one so we make sure that energy efficiency is included in the package that we use in energy efficiency education it doesn't make sense to put solar panels on a house that is not energy efficient so that's certainly something that we pay attention to when we talk to clients and if their house is not energy efficient we will connect them to resources that will help them go down that path and so we all ultimately we provide a turnkey solar installation meaning we hand over the the system to the homeowner and it becomes theirs and they can see how it works and we provide a 10-year loan guarantee or 10-year warranty and I believe it's a 25-year equipment warranty so if anything goes wrong we're there we're able to come out and take a look at you know what's going on and making sure that we don't just build the system and walk away and something goes wrong we want to make sure that it is something that we can leverage for years to come and then I did mention that we have this workforce development model where it's essentially a classroom on the roof we have a team leaders program where we're able to bring volunteers through an entire process where they demonstrate that they're capable of doing all the different processes of the installation themselves and then once they do that with our solar installers on staff and we do actually have this solar installer here in the room that person officially becomes a team leader with grid and then once that happens they qualify to take the solar installer exam which is actually a really big step in the solar industry so we have a partnership with NASCAP and we make sure that people have that opportunity to really be able to funnel into the industry so what have we done so far we have that sort of hockey stick picture that Katrin was talking about earlier of you know we did a couple installations 10 years ago and then the last couple years the last five years really it's gone way up exponentially so we've done 14 megawatts of installations across the country well where our offices are located and those are essentially on single family homes so those are lots of systems across the country so that equates to 4,800 systems essentially to date which ultimately is $133.5 million that is generated for the lifetimes of these families that are receiving those systems so it's an incredible impact on top of that we've trained over 19,000 volunteers during the process of the installations equaling 420,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions prevented so so why are we doing this why are we focusing on affordable housing why are we focusing on low-income communities like I said earlier you know our overall mission is to make clean renewable energy accessible to everyone lower-income communities are disproportionately impacted by their energy bill and so by being able to decrease their energy use we're giving them the no pun intended the power to sort of direct that funding elsewhere whether it be back into their mortgage or to put you know healthier food on their tables or sports equipment for their children whatever it might be that they do have that funding that they can direct elsewhere and also at the same time they also are sort of susceptible to higher energy costs depending on where they're located so and really we're seeing this is a move beyond sort of the early adopter phase grid was created because Erica and Tim were engineers installing solar in California and they recognized that the market would not be able to mature without it being accessible to all different demographics of you know the United States so really building a program that allows solar to be accessible to lower-income communities and helps mature the solar market overall so I talked a little bit about the workforce development portion so this provides a hands-on experience for you know solar jobs in general I talked about the team leaders program I do want to say as the executive director of the new mid-atlantic office I came on board and was excited to hire a couple installers to hit the ground running and have found that actually it's very hard to find installers in the area because the solar industry is growing quite rapidly and other solar companies are scooping everybody up that's available so this is actually an industry that's looking for a qualified workforce that grid can come in and help build that pipeline and so really we will partner with community colleges other nonprofits veteran organizations local governments etc to really sort of make that happen so I mentioned we have you know had 19,000 individuals receive the hands-on experience which is our volunteers you don't have to have any experience to actually do the installation with grid you don't even have to know how to use a hammer you can just come out and do an install and we will teach you how there's a roof team and a ground team and so if you don't want to be on the roof you can be on the ground safety is our number one priority and so I expect each and every one of you to come out and volunteer with grid now that we're here in the region um but I do really want to point out that we have had over 1500 paid job opportunities created through those volunteers in our team leaders program through grid over the last uh I believe that's over the last five years and that actually that statistic is from February so we've created more job since then and this picture I've just I have a soft spot for this picture because that is the passive house install in ivy city with habitat so grid really sees ourselves as a collaborator we come into the community and we want to work with everyone we work with the homeowners we work with the solar industry we work with affordable housing agencies much like habitat there's a number of others in the area we need to work closely with the local municipalities to make this work um uh we you know talk about creative financing like we're not in california so we're having to leverage um more local incentives that that is are not from the same sort of sash program that's provided in california um we have corporate sponsors we do corporate workday builds we partner with job training organizations foundations and other volunteers so you know financing our model is sort of the question it's like how do you make this work in across the country and i think that's really where we need to focus on it's like dc has the best s rec market in the country right now what's an s rec solar renewable energy credit and that we're able to leverage those s recs to help cover the cost of the system however that only covers a small portion of the cost it covers about a third fortunately we're able to work with third-party financers to monetize those s recs up front so that we can help cover the cost but the s rec market is not meant to stick around forever so the the value of those s recs will go down in a few years another piece that we use here or we'll use here in the mid-atlantic is um the federal income tax credit and so we're actually able to monetize the federal income tax credit um through the same third-party financer um to help us uh add a little bit more to the cost of the system um which you know sort of gets us to about half uh so then we're looking at corporate contributions i mentioned we do corporate workdays um similar to habitat and other nonprofits that bring teams out from companies around the country that are interested in learning about solar what's great is to get solar companies out and get people that work for a solar company and have actually never touched a solar panel before it's kind of fun to see um you know how it all sort of shakes out but we also get grants from foundations and municipalities much like uh many non-profit uh one of the other big pieces of the puzzle is that we have a large portion of in-kind donations for our equipment um i believe the stat recently was 68 percent of um all of our equipment was donated um so essentially we serve as a massive aggregator for the low-income community um that also sort of you know brings it to a very very inexpensive level um and then we receive donations like any other volunteer would from individuals and other volunteers so um you know i think our sort of uh call to action here uh today is to really sort of evaluate um those pieces of the puzzle that we just talked about and how we can um sort of figure out the best path forward so we're doing a number of pilots and all of our different offices across the country um so is it something that we do piecemeal um at the local level is it something that we need to focus more on the national level um the reason we have our offices in the areas that they are in is because third party financers are interested in those areas there is already a strong solar market um or there's you know a strong solar s rec uh system or there's local support and so we want to be able to move into communities that don't necessarily have that local or state level support that um some of the other areas around the country have so i think that's the sort of the thought that i'll leave with the group today and that really sort of exploring how to make sure that clean renewable energy is accessible to everyone um and figuring out how to finance that so thank you thank you so much nicole um so i would like to open up for questions i'm sure i i know i have a lot but this is your time so um so for any of the panelists uh please uh uh feel free to um ask questions and if you would state your your your affiliation first that would be wonderful um anybody yes sir there's some good know that the head of a person of persons uh they're not becoming the three organizations to do something could you survive what would you do otherwise uh does it require a grant from some entity for you to actually get in and fix up the house or build the house or um is there any way of developing a model of which you can work with individuals or work actually folks to do their own houses uh or does it require assistance from above or outside beyond and i can i can speak specifically to the solar portion of the conversation um i mean basically the the pieces that i just talked about um we are trying to make those cover the entire cost of the system um we have a number of pilots um particularly in cal or colorado and i think there's one in new york um uh piloting ppa's essentially where great alternatives is a stand between organization and we do a prepay for the homeowner um so that because the homeowner doesn't have the credit that would be required um for to obtain their own ppa which is a power purchase agreement so um sort of the lease to payback system um and then we also have a pay it forward program that's sort of layered on top of that where um uh the the homeowners that receive the systems actually do pay a small portion of uh the cost of the system but we calculate that based on um the savings that they would receive from the system so it would never be more than 50 percent of their savings um so they would always be cash positive and so we would redirect that payment back into um future install so we're working towards a model and ultimately that is that is the goal is to figure out how to make this a self-sustaining model that's not dependent on grants or donations to to keep us running essentially uh well i'm i'm happy to say that we are self-funded we're funding ourselves mostly through training and certifications we get individual donations but that's not really where most of our funding comes from and that comes from like a lesson a hard lesson learned actually from our friends first time around the super insulators and passive solar folks um they told us the story of the early 80s where funding all of a sudden went away like solar and solar thermal was in full swing and all those subsidies the carpet was pulled out from underneath them and the entire kind of industry that was just starting to grow collapsed so we've been from the beginning trying to make the case that whatever we propose needs to be economically feasible and this is why i showed this kind of like cost-effectiveness curve we need to be able to make the argument that the improvement will pay itself back over a certain amount of time that is reasonable and only then we can actually like i think promote this is like a lasting change it needs to sustain itself it needs to be a valuable proposition for the folks who are doing it are there any kind of federal finance programs that have been particularly successful there's has a 203k program it has its power saver program through title one are there any have any of those programs been useful or are there other sorts of models out there that have been particularly useful in terms of federal access to financials with federal government so i will just say from the federal government perspective we've been leveraging the federal income tax credit that's specific to solar the makers and that'll end or sunset in 2016 so it's really only available for two more years unfortunately so that i mean that's a conversation that we can continue there's the programs that we've been partnering with HUD and DOE to see you know how we can facilitate the work that we're doing whether it be through solar curriculums and drop training partnerships with local universities or actually installing solar on HUD properties so those you know conversations that were happening so making sure that the funding is there so that we can continue to do that but like i said i think the conversation really needs to continue and we need to explore what else can be done i'd like to add to that our affiliate we we actually leverage more local dollars district dollars but i believe that there is some HUD pastor grants that you can leverage to take that to the next level as a developer to a passive house or sustainable so um from the kind of like implementation side of things of passive house they are actually quite a few local programs available they are not bad at all like ten thousand twenty thousand dollars they are mostly coming through grid financing grid programs right now and it's not specifically necessarily for passive house i believe only massachusetts went that round they for retrofits to that level they had some money available in the kind of twenty thirty thousand dollar range but the zero energy home ready home program that has various relationships with utility programs so and because our certification also doubles as that certification as well we automatically gain that label as well that makes passive house is also eligible for the zero energy ready home programs actually questions for grid mostly on multifamily side have you guys done anything and then on the single family home if i understand how your financing is correct you're basically purchasing the system for the home buyer so the home buyer ends up owning the system that i have correct yes so we traditionally do installs on single family homes although we are looking to move into the multifamily world we have a couple pilot projects that we're developing right now to see how we can take this model into the multifamily world and we're doing a lot of that work at our headquarters level so and actually you start to bridge a lot of different policies when you go into multifamily and sometimes well a lot of times is that we're looking at rental communities too so we're not necessarily looking at homeowners and then the second part for financing so you basically asked what was the question again i'm sorry yes yeah okay so they do have the system in hand there's a couple caveats to that in california they absolutely own the systems outright because we're starting to leverage the federal income tax credits it actually has they have to be held by a third party for five years so that those tax credits can be leveraged so tax credits are tricky so they might not be the best long-term route so and then ultimately they are provided to the homeowners for free unless they participate in the pay it forward program that i discussed and we're actually looking to see how we can roll that out and more more opportunities around that because we found that if the homeowner does have a little bit of skin in the game whether it be just a hundred bucks a year they actually have a little bit more ownership and connection to the system rather than if we just given it to them for free other questions so oh yes sir energy evidence uh the uh the passive house uh concept is that uh are there limits to the design of the house to get approval for instance could i get anything a small mansion that is energy efficient and these uh the energy criteria that certify and what uh are you are you employing anything to uh encourage um accessory apartment design so that a house of a modest size could uh offer homes to two families in the event that's appropriate not turn on uh another the existing program we're trying to move away from that a little bit but under the existing uh program right now you can certify essentially make mansion which uh kind of is a little funky because like a 10 000 square foot home with two people in it they actually get a bonus because they they have a surface to volume ratio that is very good and and they kind of like almost have to make less of an effort to meet the same standard and we're trying to correct for that right now and I'll work with the department of energy because we feel that's not really an equitable solution but then your second question it's we generally um encourage people for excessive accessory dwelling units to to put them in because it is actually more efficient like if you have higher density it makes it easier to meet the standard and if you have a very very small single family home that's stand stand alone it's it's inherently less efficient than if you have like two units that are that are clustered so that's that that's a very much supported solution yeah just add to that excuse me uh so dc habitat actually done the third one of the three phases that we're doing in ivy city in the passive house it's actually the entire envelope of the three buildings uh just because it was a little easier to do that now instead of individual units it's just one seen as one giant building yeah so it's about 6 000 square feet in total solar energy program are they constrained geographically or use for instance could i have my second hope uh certified or supported or can i get your home built on a coastline that's subject to damage could i get those programs supported or certified well um excellent question again um it seems not very logical right if you if you talk about like an equitable energy economy and you say like okay really we should have like energy consumption per person like something like similar to the 2000 watt society kind of putting that in perspective then inherently somebody with two homes would actually like double the energy consumption but what we find is actually really pretty cool um if you have a passive building as your second home or passive house uh you can essentially shut everything off uh the pipes won't freeze because you have the passive solar gain uh temperatures will drop probably only like to about like mid 40 45 something mid 40 somewhere in there so it's essentially if you're not there you're not using any energy so in that sense yeah we do certify second homes um we we think that's that's fine you only use energy when you're there so yeah and it's not limited to any region it works everywhere in terms of building on coastal areas i mean i think that would depend on the community and the zoning laws and what what uh communities are looking at in terms of making the whole community more resilient which i think there are a lot of cities uh kind of reevaluating that right now is there a question in the back so i actually have a project localers that would be most interested in the house they can talk to me after another question uh is like my coming home market rate perspective and your two business models are both not profit based are you aware of any a lot of the challenges are financial making buildings are building differently are there any programs that you guys are aware of policies that would improve cash flow because cash flow becomes one of the dominant factors whether or not you get a lot of the solar programs aren't necessarily it's a credit doesn't necessarily help cash flow there's appreciation which means profitable s-rex which is production based it also makes a false perspective so you guys are aware of the kind of cash flow policies that help me i'm assuming you're asking for from a for-profit perspective yeah because i mean i obviously am working on cash flow issues for non-profit and um yeah but at the same time we're able to build relationships with third party financiers that are able to do upfront monetizing particularly of the s-rex and that's actually a service that is available across the market and we're also working with a third party financier to monetize federal income tax credit so if that's something that you can take advantage of i don't know if a for-profit company would be able to monetize it up front but it's certainly something to explore yeah it it's a little bit yeah although we do search and we do have to find that financing gap for the development costs that's where we're able to leverage some of the local monies like the housing production trust fund that i mentioned earlier to really take us to the next level other ways of the we fundraise is we find corporate sponsors and we also sell the properties to capture back any any construction costs and i know in terms of um some of the new programs at least for efficiency there's the warehouse uh for energy efficient energy efficiency loans which is trying to partner both public funds and private capital to develop these efficiency programs that's fairly new there's on-bill financing utility on-bill financing again looking for that source of capital to be able to create these loan programs that can uh be you know very uh doable for the homeowner because you do the efficiency upgrades and presumably they're paying back the loan on their utility bill but they're not it won't cost them any more than if they still had the the energy waste they had before and i would just add one more thing to that um i mean a lot of the local programs that we're working with uh are still available to for-profit developers um it's just we take advantage of it because we can and for-profit developers also take advantage of it and these are usually incentive programs whether it be upfront or you know a rebate it just depends how it's set up in the locality yeah just just one comment this might just be a related um uh program um the department of energy just released a new program which is called the lender agreement um and essentially what they are trying to do is they are bringing the lenders together and uh arguing for that efficient homes or certified homes have inherent value and for them to essentially agree to give you more money in advance like in anticipation of these homes being more durable less subject to mold blah blah no risk less risk homeowner has more money to pay off the loans so and so forth so um that is brand new they're soliciting partners right now so we're anticipating we're partnering that one as well we're anticipating that to to really help financing some of those projects that's a critical uh point and a very good question because that is really what makes this sustainable sustainability being environmental economic and and social so um thank you yes sir there are some of the programs that might be available now but you take advantage of because you have to know where uh they will fail themselves like programs i don't know that someone who's building a four hundred thousand dollar home is going to reduce the sale price of it because they were able to energize efficiently energize their home and it's your option right you won't build such a home but of course you'll you're offering cost savings to buyers or to owners who are living there now now the only thing i would add to that is that in my previous life i worked at the virginia housing development authority and um we did work on what we sort of termed green mortgages which allowed for people to qualify for um homes that were out of their price range if they were more energy efficient um or if they had clean energy um installed because that would be factored into the monthly cost and so they would figure out you know what the average utility bill would be and increase that onto the mortgage so their mortgage would ultimately over a 30-year span um be larger than what they would normally qualify for so there are mechanisms out there for market rate affordability and sustainability um obviously that's not something that we're taking advantage of in this particular program but i think just to sort of continue the conversation around whether or not we can make it affordable there are definitely mechanisms out there one other thing i will mention is that there is a organization here in dc called dc sun and they aggregate solar purchasing so that really brings down the cost of um the panels themselves and so they'll do a community they'll go to a community and see if they try to they'll try to get as many people interested in purchasing at the same time and then they get a number of contractors signed on board and the costs will go way down because they're doing it at scale any studies uh done on uh the enhancement of the local economy of this approach potential uh data assessment would show uh to policymakers that there is a community advantage to uh keeping dollars low uh but i'm going to be building something school companies and so on there is that advantage to being corporate uh if you are spending more locally uh is there a perspective on this that's in in the in the literature well we've only done two so far we're doing six more so hopefully we'll have a nice study uh once those six are complete and i would say uh how that actually impacts i would see itself but in terms of how that impacts the the pocket of the owner that that's already been done at least with our homeowners that they're putting down that money paying down that mortgage and it's actually helping them which is really our key goal is really helping homeowners become sustainable themselves uh not live dog at all yeah i think uh you would expect that that trickles down to the whole community like if the homeowner uh him or herself is more stable and can actually maintain home ownership and it's not forced out of the home because of lack of resources failing to pay the mortgage so i would expect this to definitely show great results as soon we have larger communities developed and we have more data and i think that's a uh a statistics that over time we'll be able to follow a lot closer um and like how many families stay in the homes that we do the installations on it just it's been a short amount of time since we've started so um the one thing i would add is that you know we can say that we've created 1500 jobs and so that has a major impact to the local economy terry if you put take energy efficient buildings really reduce the use and then you can make them approach it when you're producing the soil are you looking anyway uh further out like maryland the uh new jersey and medicaid and california they're all looking at the impact of distributed generation on the grid so it's interesting to think about the dramatic reduction in usage as a result of building this house putting generation on the top and you think in terms of a like a city block full of these houses dramatic reductions on the generation demand on the grid so so i would say we're very very early in any sort of phase of discussions around that we typically design our systems to cover about 75 to 80 percent of the energy cost in the home so we don't normally design a system to go produce energy pass the amount that they use and there's a couple of reasons for that but we don't know what's going to happen with the passive homes because they are so much more efficient and we designed the systems to be the same size as they would for a typical energy efficient home so ultimately they will produce at least 100 percent of the energy costs if not more and so we'll just have to see over time um you know what that starts to look like and you know watch those meters spin backwards and what that really means to sort of those communities that we're working in so it's exciting next briefing thank you all for coming today in this miserable weather and let me uh please join me in thanking our panel again for the wonderful presentations