 Noontide from Sunny Honolulu. This is Howard Wigg, Code Green, Sink Tech, Hawaii, March 14, 2022. We're going to talk codes today. What could be more fascinating actually for people like Dwayne Johnlin and myself? It is infinitely fascinating. And this is, I speak for myself, what will go on to our tombstone. We saved X amount of energy and that is, it comes out to a huge, huge, huge amount of gaseous reduction, greenhouse improvement, greenhouse effect improvement and so forth, so forth. We just love our building energy codes. And is there any direct effect on codes in the state of the Hawaiian economy? I think all of you in Hawaii are aware that we have, we, the main refinery in Hawaii, the only refinery has cut off Russian oil and we used to import a whole heck of a lot of it to make electricity to run our cars and our trucks and get some to Honolulu Harbor to run the ships. That oil is going to come from somewhere not Russia and that's going to affect us not just in the high prices we're experiencing, but in the fact that we did Russian oil because it was well suited in the refining process to making a heck of a lot of jet fuel. And guess what? Something like 25% of all the energy or fossil fuel energy that we used goes to jet fuel. We're a small state with a huge airport, so be prepared for even more price hikes there. And if we had more efficient energy building codes, we were doing more with less, we'd need less of that jet fuel, which is exactly what my job is all about. And in a closely related way, that is what Wayne Johnlin's job is all about. He's the chief honcho engineer for the great big city of Seattle, and they have one of the most energy efficient, energy, energy efficient building codes in the entire nation. Thanks to Dwayne, he's been in that position least since the Triassic era, I think. So welcome, Hardy, welcome to my good code buddy, Dwayne Johnlin. And well, how long have you been with the city of Seattle and how does the city of Seattle's energy code compare with the codes of the rest of the nation? I've been doing this for a decade now, just past my 10 year anniversary a bit ago. Prior to that, my whole life was being the technical architect on big construction projects. But Seattle tries to maintain itself about 20% more efficient than the rest of the country. And in fact, that is that is in city legislation. Whoa. We've got to get some legislation like that, but might get just a wee bit of a pushback and much more conservative Hawaii. So give us some instances of how the Seattle's energy code is better, more efficient than the codes of the rest of the nation. One of my mottos is that which exists must be possible, right? If you look around the country, there's all kinds of really high performing buildings and around the world. And it's not like this is rocket science to decide that we should make all buildings at that level. So that's what we do. Every chance we get when we do a new code every three years, we spend a year or so developing that next level. And we look at how can we most economically save energy and reduce our carbon emissions in Seattle? And so most recently, the code we're under right now says, okay, we're done with using fossil fuel for space heating and water heat. And we're also not going to waste electric resistance heating on that. We're going to do that with heat pumps. Obviously, here in Hawaii, and what you're trying to do is keep the sun from melting people on a warm, sunny day. Here, of course, this is March in Seattle. It's raining and 47 degrees out. So we're all about insulation and really good window properties and running efficient heating. But that's overall reducing the total amount of fossil fuel we're dumping into the atmosphere. And I should back up a little bit just for those who don't eat, live, and sleep building codes all day. What you do with an energy code is people meet people like Dwayne and myself meet nationally every three years. And we update all the codes, the electrical code, the plumbing code, and so forth, including the energy code. And we ask ourselves, how can this national code be improved? How can you do more with less, more heating, cooling, comfort, whatever, with less electricity, less energy? And then that national code goes to the state levels. And the way Hawaii works is you adopt the state code. And some of the people approving that adoption are the county guys, the county building officials. We have four counties here. And then it's to them to adopt that state code either as is or with amendments all along the way you can amend. And so we're, for instance, we have adopted the 2018 energy code. We're just about to start work on the 2021. And that's replicated nationwide. And what you do with an energy code itself is start with the envelope, the walls, roofs, windows, and ask in Dwayne's case, how do we keep that gosh darn cold out of here? And in Hawaii's case, how do you keep that gosh darn heat out of here in an economical fashion? And then you look at all the equipment, air conditioning, heating, lighting, so forth, plumbing, and ask how can we achieve comfort and health in the most cost-effective energy efficient manner? Is that a good summary, Dwayne? Yeah. First try to lower your loads by doing an intelligent job of working with nature, whatever your nature is. Make things really efficient. Make sure that they're controlled so that efficient machinery is off when there's nobody around. You must have walked into a conference room sometime that nobody's been in for two hours, and the lights are on and the screen is on, and the air conditioning has got you down to where you have to bundle up with a wool scarf to be able to survive in there. And there's been nobody to appreciate it. You can control things better. And finally, the icing on the cake when you've done all that is, can you generate some of your own electricity on the roof to take the load off of your generating plant there? I'll give you one guess as on a per capita basis, which state has most of that electricity stuff up on its roof? See, how could I guess? It's the one that's got 34 cents a kilowatt hour electricity. Is that right? Yep. And it's going up, given the price of oil, we're still majority oil fired. That's the way we still make electricity, and it's my job and job of all my colleagues in the Hawaii State Energy Office to reduce, reduce, reduce, reduce that. So Dwayne, you are also not just the Seattle chief honcho, but you chair something called the commercial committee for the 2024 IECC. And that we, as I said, we improve energy codes every three years, and now we're beginning to work on the 2024. And you Dwayne are the chief honcho of all honchos for asking how can we take the 2021 and improve it even more in a cost-effective manner for 2024? So can you give us a little description besides you're putting in a trillion and three hours into this? Sure. There's, there's, it's a big committee. There's 45 people on the committee. And then there's another, there are several subcommittees and each of those subcommittees has not only people from the main committee, but others as well. So that adds another 44. We've got some national lab staff that's dedicated to us and a few ICC staff. So you're over 90 people directly, you know, officially with roles. And then there's no end of other interested parties that want to get a word in. So, so it's a, it's a, it's a big group and it's entirely running online. We've, we decided we're going to try to get through this whole thing without having to fly across the country and go through those horrible long meetings. And, and, and so we're doing it, but it's a lot of hours for a lot of people. So good news is that instead of 90 people flying all over the country, they're sitting in the comfort of their offices or homes and their carbon footprint when they're sitting in their homes is more like a zero BTU, a butt print in their chairs, much more energy efficient. That's the, the consolation there is as much as we would like to write. I would like to get together again. It's energy efficient and, and it uses everyone's time better. And yet, yeah, you do miss something since you've not chatting on the shuttle bus or waiting in line for coffee or something like that where you would often end up chatting with your adversaries. You know, this doesn't happen. One routine I've introduced to these meetings to try to make up for that is called three minutes of fame. And so twice during each of these long meetings that the main committee has, I have somebody come on and they have exactly three minutes to tell us anything they want about themselves and about what they believe in. And, and that's turned out to be terrific. And so little by little we get to know something about each other, even though it's, we don't get to actually sit down and break bread together. That's an interesting concept. I've been to some meetings where I like toastmasters, tell us very briefly what's the most interesting thing you've done with your life or something like that. This would be a good way to, to break the ice because as you mentioned, there are people who don't agree with us. If everybody agreed with you and me, the world would be saved. We wouldn't need any of that Russian oil. We would have cut off the need for Russian oil what 10, 15 years ago. Well, there's a, you know that society is pretty much divided anymore into two warring camps, right? And, and so if you're a good conservative, you probably see all these environmental regulations as a liberal thing and therefore something you, you need to oppose. And, and beyond that, I think that, that everybody who's invested in doing things the way they're doing it now sees mandated, mandated change as being something that's going to make trouble for them and danger and insecurity. And certainly if you're part of the fossil fuel industry, then having all these people running around, reducing the amount of fossil fuel you can send to them is, it's an existential threat, right? So, so it's tough on those people. If you're selling one kind of equipment and we say, you know what, that's not good enough anymore. You have to sell a different kind. That's difficult for people. Yeah. And you find this hard to believe, but I run into that all the time. And since this is a very small town, I won't give any specific examples there. So what, well, let's start with, no, no, no, let's start with the 2024. What kind of proposals are you looking at that's going to ramp up efficiency from the 2021 to the 2024? Well, I should back up a little bit and say, absolutely, anybody is free to send in a code change proposal. And so for my, for my committee, we got 256 of these. The residential committee, I think has has about as many. And, and every one of them gets a hearing. And, you know, I've had things up before this committee before in the past. And some of my ideas, you know, have been adopted. And they're in the code. And others got shot down in two minutes flat and they just disappeared. You got to have a thin skin. But these subcommittees are have now for the last couple months have been grinding through these proposals that came in as one of one of the subcommittees is, is for envelope, one is for lighting and electrical stuff, one is for mechanical gear. They're like moving through these things. And, and as they come to a vote there, then they're sending them up to us in the main committee. So what we've had so far has not really included any of the big controversies that we're going to see as we as we go forward. Some of them, I saw just today, a proposal had come through from Seattle that we require what's called a dedicated outdoor air system for our mechanical systems. It's, it's perceived by a lot of the country as being quite a radical thing to do. But we've had it in place for quite a while now. And, and that's the way you do mechanical systems. We see that it saves a lot of energy, but that one didn't make it out of the subcommittee. We see we're also going to be dealing this week with the the requirement to put in electric vehicle charging stations in a lot of buildings, especially multifamily. As you might imagine, people from the multifamily housing business are not that thrilled. The energy advocates are. And so we're, we're going to have a lively discussion. And, and so they're just, you know, with the 256 of these to look at, there's no way to generalize, but it goes all the way from little language corrections that somebody just always was bothered by the fact that something was ambiguous and they fixed it. And we all go, good for you. We fixed a little problem up to really big new additions to, to that would move things forward dramatically. And I don't know with those big ones yet, what's going to happen? Well, I can pretty well predict that a lot of it is if Honolulu is representative of the nation, but a lot of it is going to be electric vehicles. The Cody of Honolulu managed to get through for the 2015 IECC, the fact that new single family and multifamily residences shall be EV ready. Meaning the electrical panels shall be sized appropriately. And that their show shall be an outlet in the parking spaces. Now, that was, that was hugely, hugely controversial. But we got that through just for Honolulu and not for the other countries. You have a, you know, this problem that you have so much solar energy installed that your system can't handle it. But if everybody were to hang one of those really high tech batteries in their garage and just have it set up so they directly soaked up that solar energy into their batteries so they could use it for their car that night, that's a match made in heaven. Not only do you take the stress off the grid, but instead of having to lose 7% of your energy as it goes from DC power on the panels to AC in the grid and then back to DC in the car battery, it would just go straight as DC power into the battery. You'd lose a percent or two, I think. It's pretty slick and really you in Hawaii are in a position to show the rest of us how it's done. Well, unfortunate fact, EV owners in the middle of the day when the sun is shining brilliantly don't have their cars parked at home. What's the matter with these gosh darn people? That's why you need a battery in between. Because the battery doesn't go anywhere. It's always there ready to soak up power. And who knows, maybe you could even make it so that it could push power back out on the grid at night when there was more need for it. There's a lot of possibilities there. Well, guess what Hawaiian Electric is exactly doing? And guess what? Now when you install new PV photoelectric panels, you must repeat, must include batteries with that. Because we have what's called an evening peak. The demand for electricity starts going up around 5 p.m. just when the sun starts setting. And to compound our evening peak, we are a tourism based society. That's our economic driver. Guess what the tourists are doing in the day? They're out on the beach. They're shopping, touring. And guess when they come back to their hotel rooms? 5, 6 in the evening and everything starts going. All the hotel rooms, all the restaurants, all the bars going like mad. So we have that huge evening peak. And we are, as you said, we are generating too much solar energy in the day. Huge excess. And it's being stored, stored, stored. We have a whole farm, a battery farm out there just dedicated to that. And we feed into the grid in the evening hours. Yep. We're going to see more and more of that. I got to visit a site in Switzerland where they hollowed out a mountain. They hired miners from a neighboring country and made a room that's like the size of football fields and hundreds of feet tall. And they use it for this gigantic pumping station where they, when they have too much renewable energy coming in, they use it to run these very efficient pumps and move it to a lake at the top of the mountain. And then when they need some power, the water runs the other direction down to a lake at the bottom of the mountain. And they just balance it that way. It's their version of a giant battery. Yeah. The island of Kauai is doing exactly that same thing. They just got approval for it. So it'll start. Pretty darn soon. Stored hydro that's called. Makes sense. Yeah. So one specific energy efficiency measure that is definitely near and dear to my heart is the good old LED light. And I did a survey of hardware stores here in Honolulu and I could not because I wanted to say this is not just pie in the sky stuff. This is what is available really and truly available in Honolulu. I could not find an LED no matter how tiny it was that yielded less than 80 lumens per watt. 80 was the lowest of the low and that was an exception. That was an outlier. Most of these lamps were at least in the 90s and a lot of them well into the hundreds lumens per watt. Therefore, I proposed successfully to Honolulu, our largest county, that in their upcoming energy code, they upgrade the minimum lumens per watt to 70. And they went along with it and then luminaries likewise shall have their numbers upgraded. And there's additional advantage here for Honolulu where we don't need any more heat in our interior spaces. You lower the wattage the less the heat gain. So that's going to go through. And that's in some of our stretch codes nationwide. But this will be a real live city code and I hope to be able to pass that on to others. Yes. And in Seattle for a long time now we've had the maximum amount of wattage you could use in a room 10% below the national standard and nobody ever runs in any trouble with that with LEDs. So it's another thing you could consider for Honolulu is to say, okay, we're just going to keep tamping down on that and make sure that nobody's using more watts than they need to because these are really good. And if for your viewers who haven't seen the most recent LEDs, the coloring is good now. And I think some of the early ones had a flicker now and then that was really irritating, but that's pretty much been resolved by the manufacturers. It's a little bit crazy that anybody would use anything else at this point. Well, how about this? I know of a certain entity that says when you're installing new commercial lighting, you have four means of controls, you control that lighting in four different ways. And there's a certain entity that said no, if you get your lighting power density down 20% below the national requirement, you need to comply with only two of those controls, those saving yourself a lot of money on engineering. And plus with the greater lighting power density, you're probably specifying fewer luminaires, therefore saving money twice over. That city happens to be a Honolulu, by the way. There's a category of light fixtures called LLLC, luminaire level lighting control. That's as opposed to room level lighting control. And each one of those has a daylight sensor and an occupancy sensor and a wireless controller. And you can set it up so that when your whole work team goes into a conference room or goes out to lunch for a couple hours, after a little while, that area will all just go back down to maybe you could have it set for 20% as much light. In every year, there's 8,760 hours. And maybe an office is only open for 2,000 of those. And so if there's any lighting setup that's not controlled so that it knows to shut off when there's nobody around, there's another 6,000 hours where you're just wasting it. And also you make everything last longer when it shuts off or shuts down. So that term design for off is the way to really think about that. Yeah, we're mandating a brand new invention called an occupancy sensor. How about that? Nobody ever thought of that before, huh? We've only got a few minutes left. Any other, I mean you and I could do LEDs all day long and twice on Sunday. Any other innovative technologies that you're looking for either with the 2024 national code or the Seattle code, something new and different. Well, we're looking at a sort of write your own code idea where we have all these basic requirements we already have. And then we have a long list of above code options you could choose from. Each is assigned a certain number of points. And we can say for one jurisdiction, maybe all they think they can manage is asking people for 30 points. And some other jurisdiction, maybe Kauai says, oh, we can do that better. We'll require 60 points or something. But that lets everybody choose from all the possibilities what's the best way they want to go forward instead of having us just mandate those things. So you have a budget for energy, spend it the way that your customers are going to appreciate it the most. That is innovative. We're doing kind of a similar thing, but different. I think I'm going to throw that in. Yeah, well forming the committee tomorrow. So I'm going to put out a bunch of ideas that might be one of them. I'll be happy to come over and sit in on your committee. Okay. Yeah, just be sure to wear a hat because we had very wet winter there for a while, but we dried out. So I don't know if you're going to be able to. Can't tell me about what winter's Howard. Yeah, where today we're going to probably, oh my goodness, here it is 1230 and we're at 81 degrees. I don't know how we can stand that. It's tough. Yeah, you work on it. Okay. Thank you so much. It was great connecting with you again. Nice to see you. It was inspiring to see how ahead of the code you are. Well, I'm happy to be here and I look forward to seeing you next time. Yeah, I may be up in Seattle. All right, not too long. So drop by to see you. Okay. Think, take away E code green, March 14, 2022. Thank you everybody and see you next time.