James H. Turner Jr., Ellen Vaughan, and Colin McCormick
Moving Toward
High-Performance Buildings
At the end of May 2009, a group of 60 prominent scientists and other notables in
attendance at the St. James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, including U.S.
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, declared that, to prevent irreversible damage to
the world’s climate, worldwide carbon emissions must begin to decline in just six
years and be reduced by 50% by 2050. They believe that damage will occur if aver-
age global temperatures increase by more than two degrees centigrade. In devel-
oped countries like the U.S., the carbon footprint is stabilizing, but rapid growth
in the use of fossil fuels in developing countries means the worldwide footprint has
been increasing steadily by about one percent per year. Between 1980 E 2006, IL
NOI. share of the world’s climate footprint decreased from 26% A 20% while the
Asian share, led by China, doubled to 37%, with the largest growth in energy use
in Asia and the Middle East. The United States is currently a heavy and wasteful
energy user, but not as unique as some would have us believe. In 2006, the United
States was second to China in total carbon footprint and 13th out of 207 nazioni
in its per-capita carbon footprint.
The St. James Palace group concluded that even a rise of two degrees centi-
grade in the global temperature will have adverse consequences, but that a bigger
increase would create “unmanageable climate risks”; if total carbon emissions
worldwide continue to rise after 2015, the cuts required to keep temperature
increases at just two degrees centigrade would likely become unachievable. In light
of these sobering facts, Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the
Jim Turner is Senior Counselor and Director of Energy Policy for the Association of
Public and Land Grant Universities. Turner earlier served as Chief Counsel,
Technology Staff Director, and Energy Counsel for the House of Representatives
Committee on Science and Technology. Ellen Vaughan is Policy Director and buildings
specialist for the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. She came to EESI from
Steven Winter and Associates, where she was a Principal concentrating on high -per-
formance buildings and staffing the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council. Colin
McCormick is a senior member of the buildings group at the Federation of American
Scientists, with previous experience at the House of Representatives Committee on
Science and Technology and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
© 2009 James H. Turner Jr., Ellen Vaughan, and Colin McCormick
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James H. Turner, Jr., Ellen Vaughan and Colin McCormick
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, called for reductions by all nations
and asked developed countries to aim for a reduction of 25% A 40% in carbon
emissions by 2020.
The St. James Palace manifesto is a call for a major acceleration in internation-
al efforts to control global warming. It marks a dramatic change in U.S. policy,
from being a leader of skeptical nations who want as little change as possible to
joining those calling for the most urgent action. It was only 14 months earlier, SU
April 15, 2008, that President Bush chose income tax day to reject new taxes and
trade barriers as part of the solution to climate change and to push back until 2025
the target date for stopping the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,
effectively giving U.S. utilities and industry an additional 10 A 15 years of GHG
growth. He offered few specifics for achieving even that weakened objective. Lui
expressed concern that Congress might pass climate legislation that would hurt the
country’s economic growth and encouraged accelerated development and deploy-
ment of new technologies, while pointing out that all countries, including China
and India, would have to be a key part of any world approach to cutting green-
house gases.
At the end of June 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives, with the support
of President Obama, narrowly passed and sent to the Senate the American Clean
Energy and Security (ACES) Act. ACES would put the United States firmly in the
St. James Palace Group camp by setting goals of cutting global warming pollution
by 17% compared to 2005 levels in 2020, by 42% In 2030, e da 83% In 2050; Esso
also aims to set up a carbon trading system to enforce these levels. Virtually all
Republican representatives opposed the legislation, along with many of the
Democrats from states dependent on fossil fuels. Some of the conservative
Democrats who voted for the bill in the House almost immediately drew new
political opponents, who are focusing on the consequences of this vote in districts
that depend on fossil energy.
In the Senate, one does not achieve the 60 votes needed to move major legisla-
tion forward without bipartisanship; Republicans are currently unified in opposi-
zione, while Democrats are currently facing the same divisions as in the House. IL
Senate Republican Caucus, through its Chairman Senator Lamar Alexander, ha
floated an alternative approach. It features rapid expansion of nuclear power and
energy research, two positions popular with Republicans and swing Democrats but
given short shrift in the House-passed bill, and strongly opposes the House car-
bon-trading provisions which the House Democratic sponsors consider essential.
How compromise will be reached at this time is unclear, but approximately 15% Di
the Senate would have to change their positions before a bill with a rigorous cap-
and-trade provision could be passed. In recent years, it has been the rule rather
than the exception, that major environmental legislation can take multiple
Congresses to enact into law.
If the United States did reduce carbon emissions by 83 percent by 2050, Questo
would be one of the most revolutionary changes in the way Americans live their
lives in our nation’s history. An American public that has grown comfortable with
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Moving Towards High-Performance Buildings
old transmission lines, inefficient appliances and vehicles, incandescent light
bulbs, leaky, low-quality construction, and behaviors borne out of the belief that
energy is cheap and abundant is being asked to make a significantly larger reduc-
tion than the worldwide average because its per capita usage of fossil fuels is over
four times the world average. If the world carbon footprint is cut in half and the
NOI. carbon footprint is cut by 83%, NOI. per-capita carbon use would still be over
50% larger than the average world per-capita use and the U.S. would find itself in
the same relative position where the “developed” nations with the smallest carbon
footprints—France, Sweden, and Switzerland—find themselves today.
But neither these countries nor the U.S. has had to face the proposed 50%
worldwide reduction in carbon use, which would have us getting by on half the
per-capita carbon that those European countries now use. The U.S. per-capita lev-
els of carbon emissions in 2050 would be below the current levels of Mexico and
China, and total U.S. emissions would fall below current levels in India. Think pre-
Henry Ford. To find a U.S. carbon footprint that small, we have to go back to the
period from 1905 A 1910, when the U.S. population was around 90 million. Nel
debate to date, there has been little focus on just how big an 83% reduction in car-
bon emissions would be and what it would take to win public acceptance of the
i cambiamenti. Preserving a standard of living that Americans will accept while displac-
ing this much carbon will require us to replace most current energy technologies.
Cars will need to run on alternatives to fossil fuels, dramatic changes will be
required in the industrial sector, and in the building sector we will need to employ
highly efficient technologies and designs, renewable energy, and a conservation
ethic at a level as yet unheard of in the United States.
This is what leading scientists say we must do to save our environment, Ma
George Bush’s skeptical outlook on climate change still resonates with the public,
depending on how polling questions are written. A March 2009 Gallup Poll survey
recorded the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on
global warming in Gallup’s history of polling on the issue: 41% of respondents said
the news media exaggerates the problem, UN 6% swing in just one year away from
concerns about global warming. Of the eight environmental issues polled, global
warming came in as the least worrisome. In April 2009, a Rasmussen Poll showed
just 34% of respondents feel that human activities are a factor in global warming,
down from 47% a year earlier. In a June 30 Rasmussen poll, immediately after the
House of Representatives vote, 42% of respondents felt that the bill’s policies
would hurt the U.S. economy and just 19% believed that they would help it. Other
polls showed the majority feeling that the bill is a mistake. An August Washington
Post Poll showed a small majority favoring the cap-and-trade provisions of the
ACES bill, with a hardening of Republican opinion against cap and trade, but this
same poll showed that feelings on energy are less intense than those on health care
and the economy. This is in keeping with the general rule that environmental con-
cerns take second place to fiscal concerns in tough economic times.
The date for Senate consideration of the bill has slipped and may slip further
as the ante is raised. On August 25, 2009, the Los Angeles Times reported that
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James H. Turner Jr., Ellen Vaughan, and Colin McCormick
despite an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that global warm-
ing is real, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is raising the stakes: it is calling on the
Environmental Protection Agency to hold a public trial on global warming, com-
plete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would be asked to rule
on whether human activities are a dangerous component in global warming before
any efforts are made to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. Two other
business groups, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National
Federation of Independent Business, are starting to make major purchases of ads
opposing cap and trade in states represented by swing senators.
If current trends continue and the Senate bill goes forward, it will be substan-
tially changed from the House-passed version; it will take into consideration some
of the views of the opposition, and it will require a substantial amount of time to
work out differences with the House of Representatives. This means the Obama
Administration will need to look to Executive Branch actions rather than those of
the Congress if it wants to show attendees at the international meetings on climate
change in Copenhagen in December that the United States is committed to doing
its share to meet worldwide 2015 E 2020 carbon-reduction goals.
Assuming that the Nobel laureates of the St. James Palace Symposium are cor-
rect in stating that we have just six years to stop growth in the global carbon foot-
print, and that we must begin significant reductions by 2020, then the carbon
reduction goals in the ACES legislation must immediately be considered a nation-
al imperative. We cannot afford to wait for Congress to endorse them. Forse
President Obama can use an executive order to make achieving the 2015 E 2020
goals official administration policy and focus the Executive Branch on achieving
them using available authority from existing law. If the Congress later succeeds in
passing legislation on climate change or energy, the executive order and the imple-
mentation could be modified accordingly.
We would need strong leadership from our Executive Branch to explain this
plan to the American people, since success requires hundreds of millions of indi-
vidual citizens making the right decisions about purchases of energy-efficient
vehicles, appliances, and electronic equipment, while living in energy-efficient
buildings and practicing old- fashioned conservation. Allo stesso tempo, improve-
ments in building codes, appliance standards, efficient vehicle design and use, E
a host of coordinated public policies must be put in place to support positive
choices and phase out energy waste.
THE PROMISE OF THE BUILDING SECTOR:
THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE VERSUS THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
While energy efficiency improvements will occur throughout all sectors over time,
Secretary Chu has described the building sector, including residential housing, COME
the low-hanging fruit in efforts to reduce the worldwide carbon footprint. Nel
U.S., the building sector accounts for almost 40% of total energy use and carbon
emissions,E 70% of electricity consumption. And unlike some of the most visi-
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Moving Towards High-Performance Buildings
ble efficiency opportunities in the transportation and industrial sectors, such as
electric cars and advanced manufacturing techniques, key technologies for signif-
icant efficiency gains in buildings are already available and cost effective. Secretary
Chu is correct that we must switch to low-energy buildings in new construction
and perform energy upgrades on a large percentage of our installed building stock,
as that is our best chance of meeting 2020 goals and creating momentum for the
changes that are projected between 2020 E 2050. In the short term, achieving
major improvements in energy use in the building sector could buy us time to
improve building technology further and to make breakthroughs in other sectors,
with longer lead times and more dramatic need for new technologies. Therefore,
the U.S. building sector is our focus in the balance of this essay.
It is generally understood that Germany, with its Passivhaus Standard, E
Svizzera, with the related Minergie-P-ECO Standard, are among the nations
that have surpassed the United States in several areas: understanding and con-
structing low-energy buildings, developing highly efficient windows and certain
other building components, designing and operating buildings as efficient systems,
and adopting a national environmental ethic. Although the earliest prototypes of
low-energy buildings originated in the United States and Canada more than 30
years ago, they were taken more seriously and perfected abroad. In the United
States, a small number of building scientists in and outside of government have the
expertise to design and construct high-quality, low-energy buildings, but they face
low expectations, financial barriers, and regulatory disincentives, while in
Germany and Switzerland, increasing expertise finds a ready market.
Minergie is a voluntary energy efficiency standard that has been used over the
past decade to certify over 14,000 Swiss buildings, each of which uses at least 60%
A 80% less energy than a conventional building, with less than 10% additional
building cost. This compares to savings of 20% A 40% for U.S. Energy Star homes;
the rate per capita of Minergie certifications is over twice the Energy Star rate in
the United States. In practice, Anche se, Minergie’s influence on Swiss building prac-
tices is much higher because many of Switzerland’s cantons have offered financial
incentives for Minergie buildings and have adjusted their energy codes to require
energy efficiency at levels very close to the original Minergie level. In Svizzera,
Minergie is the basic low-energy standard. A newer variant, Minergie P, incorpo-
rates traditional passive design and passive solar techniques, and Minergie Eco is
Switzerland’s green building standard. Minergie buildings always take into consid-
eration the benefits of the earth as a heat sink, and aim to use solar energy and nat-
ural ventilation. If solar is not yet economical for a Minergie building, the build-
ing is designed to allow easy solar installation when the technology becomes eco-
nomical. The highest efficiency buildings based on Minergie-P go beyond the rated
savings and are virtually off the grid.
Passivhaus is an even more exacting German voluntary private-sector stan-
dard, and design software that relies on very thick insulation, triple-glazed win-
dows, air-tightness, heat recovery, elimination of thermal bridging and uninten-
tional air changes, elimination of conventional heating systems, and careful opti-
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James H. Turner Jr., Ellen Vaughan, and Colin McCormick
Abbastanza
mization to reduce energy and building costs even further. Solar technologies are
always considered for Passivhaus buildings. Worldwide, 15,000 buildings have been
built to the Passivhaus Standard, and experienced German designers and builders
can now bring in these buildings at a cost only 3% A 5% above the cost of a con-
ventional building. The designs are primarily oriented toward cold climates and it
takes some work to apply them to other regions, but many of the Passivhaus prin-
ciples have been shown to work with warm-weather buildings. The technology is
A
sophisticated
require extensive training for
both designers and construc-
tors as well as extreme atten-
tion to detail by the designer
and builder; it has led to the
development of better win-
dows and more sophisticated
HVAC systems than can cur-
rently be purchased in the
United States. Overall, both
Switzerland and Germany
have higher-tech construction
industries than the U.S. E
are moving steadily on the
path to zero-energy homes.
In the U.S., the building sector
accounts for almost 40% Di
total energy use and carbon
emissions, E 70% Di
electricity consumption. E
unlike some of the most visible
efficiency opportunities in the
transportation and industrial
sectors such as electric cars and
advanced manufacturing
techniques, key technologies
for significant efficiency gains
in buildings are already
available and cost effective.
Compared to the amount
of energy used in the world’s
most energy-efficient build-
ing, in the U.S., the typical
new or substantially remod-
eled building is an energy guz-
zler. Yet,
IL
European experience and that
of the few U.S. builders who
have constructed buildings
using Passivhaus, Minergie, or other low/zero energy designs, there is clear hope
that the U.S. building sector can contribute significantly to meeting the ACES 2020
E 2050 goals of carbon stabilization by eventually matching what world-class
designers and builders can do today. Various projects in the United States have
shown that extensive retrofits of existing buildings also can lower energy usage
25% A 40%. The big questions are whether our builders, remodelers, and build-
ing owners can change to take advantage of these opportunities, and whether as a
nation we will eventually have the political will to raise the bar in our building
codes and require what is already technologically possible.
based on
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Moving Towards High-Performance Buildings
CONSIDERING THE WHOLE BUILDING
While energy is a primary driver of a high-performance building, other design
objectives are very important. The average person spends most of his or her life in
edifici, so it is important to design not just for energy efficiency and renewable
technologies, but also for high overall building quality, including safety, security,
accessibility, resistance to hurricanes and earthquakes, fitness for intended use, E
ease of retrofit as technology improves and as building inhabitants age.
LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), one of the leading
rating systems for green buildings, has received much attention in recent years, E
many people think of a LEED building as the gold standard for a high level of ener-
gy conservation and even for high overall quality. In providing and promoting a
system for evaluating the “greenness” of buildings, LEED has done much to raise
the consciousness of the building industry and the American people regarding
energy and environmental considerations, such as choice of materials, water use,
green roofs, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Many architects have become
LEED accredited. LEED certifies design rather than building performance, E
sometimes LEED buildings use far more energy than expected; UN 2008 study by the
New Buildings Institute found that half of LEED buildings deviate by more than
25% from their designed energy use intensities. Through regular updates to LEED,
the U.S. Green Building Council is working to overcome these and other problems,
but LEED is still primarily an environmental rating system that does not give any
credit for other important aspects of buildings.
This has caused some to look beyond green design to high-performance build-
ing. A good example of the potential of high-performance, factory-produced
buildings is the Mississippi Cottage project of the State of Mississippi, Habitat for
Humanity, and the Federation of American Scientists. After Hurricane Katrina, IL
project showed that modestly priced housing units could be dramatically more
energy efficient than earlier manufactured houses; they could also be environmen-
tally sound, accessible to the disabled, and capable of withstanding hurricane-force
winds. As described by its president Henry Green, the National Institute of
Building Sciences (NIBS) is taking the lead in rethinking building standards for
high performance; he hopes its work will lead to powerful design tools for identi-
fying the win-win situations in energy conservation and overall usefulness of
buildings that only optimizing for high performance can bring to the building sec-
tor. Another win-win situation would evolve if, after the DOE fully funds and NIBS
completes its work on assessing and harmonizing standards for high-performance
edifici, the developers of the various green building rating systems use what
NIBS produces as the technical basis for their rating systems. This would help the
rating systems become an effective performance measurement tool for achieving
the intended performance of certified buildings.
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James H. Turner Jr., Ellen Vaughan, and Colin McCormick
THE STATE OF THE BUILDING INDUSTRY
In new construction, decisions on energy use are generally made by those who
design and build buildings rather than those who use them, and savings in con-
struction costs often trump even larger savings in operating costs. While major
construction companies and a few architects and builders are able to use the most
sophisticated software and employ business practices that can lead to world-class
edifici, much of the industry is less sophisticated. In 2006, there were 883,000
construction establishments with 7.1 million workers in the United States; 65 per-
cent of them employed fewer than five workers. The workforce may have little for-
mal education regarding energy-related decisions, since small construction firms
are dependent on the job training or apprentice training conducted by experienced
workers. Much work is carried out by subcontractors, so the workforce varies from
one building to the next. In any given year, new construction adds only 1% A 2%
to the installed base of buildings, so energy decisions made in a building’s con-
struction remain in effect for many years. Builder supply chains provide the mate-
rials and components that builders want, including builder-grade doors and win-
dows that are lower quality than those sold as replacements to remodelers. Absent
more stringent building codes or government financial incentives, energy efficien-
cy is unlikely to happen in new buildings because contractors have no incentive to
include energy-efficiency improvements that add to their costs but do not increase
profits.
In contrast, the energy efficiency of retrofits, remodeling, and other home
improvements depends on the level of sophistication of the building owners and
whether they consider the operational costs of their buildings in their remodeling
plans. Remodelers deal directly with the homeowners who pay the utility bills, so
they are much more likely than home builders to use energy efficiency as a selling
point. Also, builders rarely maintain a business relationship with the people who
ultimately occupy the building and pay for its energy use, while some energy-ori-
ented remodelers continue to monitor and “tune up” the performance of buildings
they have worked on. These ongoing business relationships, which are not the case
for all energy remodeling, can involve energy service contracts or other financial
incentives for continued efficiency performance that are much more closely
aligned with efficiency than is the case with builders.
BARRIERS TO HARVESTING THE LOW-HANGING FRUIT
Low-hanging fruit will remain on the tree as long as those making decisions about
building construction, renovation, and operation are unaware of its value or do
not have an easy way to harvest it. We need to re-engineer the building sector so
that energy conservation happens routinely and easily. How do we get to a tipping
point in public opinion so that the average person will be motivated to insist on
living and working in low-energy buildings? Who are the players who can make
this happen?
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Moving Towards High-Performance Buildings
A major difference between the United States and Switzerland or Germany is
the relative lack of precision in our buildings. European buildings are engineering-
driven and their builders continuously look for improvements in energy efficien-
cy through tighter fits, better materials, and manufacturing improvements.
Because they look at the building as an integrated whole rather than as a collection
of parts, they reap the associated energy savings. They pay attention to the details
that save energy and measure precisely to make sure the savings will occur. Nel
United States, we seem to accept mediocrity, incorporate only minimum code
requirements in most buildings, and focus on architectural awards rather than
building performance. While the highest-quality buildings are significantly beyond
code requirements, seven states do not even have building codes to set minimum
standards for buildings and half of the states do not have up-to-date codes. Even
when current codes are in place, they are ineffective unless they are enforced by
properly trained code officials and inspectors. Differences between expectations
and actual performance can be even larger in remodeling and retrofit, where esti-
mates of energy savings may be used as a sales tool but often no reliable measure-
ments are available to determine whether or not the energy upgrades worked.
Another problem is public apathy, coupled with industry inertia. Most
Americans do not understand that their homes, lighting, and appliances are inef-
ficient, and typically the potential buyers of a new or used home have almost no
knowledge of the energy performance of the homes they are considering, unlike
vehicles (where MPG ratings are universally available) and major appliances
(which often display an energy label). It is hard to find out how much energy a
home has used historically, or what energy savings are possible through remodel-
ing/retrofitting, which upgrades make economic sense, or how to get the work
done. This translates into relatively low demand for low-energy homes and energy
retrofitting, compared to Europe. With little public demand for better products
and services, builders have little reason to change—and the same is true for those
who design, construct, market, renovate, and sell buildings. Therefore, in terms of
energy efficiency, most builders, real estate agents, lenders, and insurers are doing
business much the same as they did years ago.
Unfortunately, we are also falling short of the challenge of developing the next
wave of innovation that will be needed to meet carbon goals after 2020. Federal
budgets for research into energy and energy efficiency soared in the second half of
the 1970s, when the American people were reeling from our first energy crisis.
These programs were cut back to perhaps 25 percent of their peak in the early
1980S, when economic problems led to major cuts across the government, and the
cuts were not restored when times got better. Now, when we really need advanced
energy technologies at competitive prices, we do not have them. Some observers
have noted that we have lost our knowledge about using indigenous building
materiali. Just as we have much to learn from research and development, Essi
argue, we have much to learn from those who came before us. Re-discovering, Rif-
thinking, re-purposing, and re-combining low-tech and local resources can also be
important sources of innovation and improvements.
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James H. Turner Jr., Ellen Vaughan, and Colin McCormick
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO BEGIN THE HARVEST?
We can meet the 2015 E 2020 carbon footprint goals only if millions of retrofits
accompany a general upgrading of the energy efficiency of most new construction.
This will require governments at all levels and the private sector to step up to the
challenge; the White House, Department of Energy, and Department of Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) will have to play leadership roles. It will also
require active participation by state and local government, code developers and
officials, and the appropriate parts of the private sector. Some of the pieces already
are in place, but a major effort to scale-up these efforts is needed as soon as possi-
ble. Several steps can be taken without waiting for the ACES legislation.
Show White House Commitment
The direction we need to go is clear, but the will to act is not. A major thrust is nec-
essary to overcome inertia and move forward. The State of the Union address or a
major presidential speech to the American public would be a powerful way to kick
off a national challenge, assuming that the President shares the conviction of the
Secretary of Energy that the world absolutely must begin to reduce the world car-
bon footprint between 2015 E 2020.
Take Advantage of the Conservation Dividend
Our best short-term hope is playing to the economic self-interest of individual
building owners and of others in the real estate and construction business. In 2005,
NOI. households spent $201 billion on utility bills and other building owners spent $150 billion more. Reducing the energy use of a year’s worth of new buildings by
25% A 40% would save a billion dollars or more for those buildings’ owners each
and every year of the buildings’ useful life. Yet, the much bigger pot of gold is in
retrofits. If 25% A 40% of the total energy costs of existing buildings can be saved
through cost-effective efficiency improvements using technologies currently avail-
able, an additional $85 billion to $135 billion per year is currently waiting to be
claimed.
Additional savings are increasingly available from cost-effective use of renew-
able energy. Ovviamente, investment is needed to claim these savings, but the pay-
back periods are short enough to reward those who try to save energy. Other sav-
ings go begging, despite government incentives to make the investment. To achieve
these reductions we need to understand our behavior: Why are virtually all of us
leaving significant amounts of money on the table each and every year by not mak-
ing the buildings we own or control more energy efficient? Why have utility ener-
gy conservation programs, energy efficiency mortgages, and other innovative pro-
grams had such low levels of participation? And what can be done to make it easy
for businesses to see the money we are wasting and devise profitable means of
helping us claim it?
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Moving Towards High-Performance Buildings
Benchmark the Best Solutions Around the Country and Around the world
The United States has a large second-mover advantage in energy. Above we
described how the Germans and Swiss are years ahead of us in thinking through
high-performance, low-energy buildings. They also are ahead of us in setting up
the infrastructure for bringing both new low-energy buildings and retrofits to the
market. They have delivery systems in place. They have trained their construction
industry. They have tried various incentives. Switzerland is one of a very few coun-
tries that have reached a tipping point: energy-efficient buildings are now so per-
vasive that the Swiss public demands them and the real estate market and the reg-
ulatory environment are responding. We need to study Switzerland and other pro-
gressive nations to figure out how they got to this point and which parts of their
experience and their policies are applicable to the United States either regionally or
nationally.
Also, some progressive communities across the United States have begun to
require all new buildings to be energy efficient and/or have launched major pro-
grams to retrofit the least energy-efficient buildings in their communities. For
instance, Austin, Texas, created its own green building program in 1990 E
recently enacted an Energy Conservation Audit and Disclosure ordinance to
improve the energy efficiency of Austin homes and buildings that receive electric-
ity from Austin Energy. The goal of the ordinance is, by 2020, to reduce electricity
bills for renters and owners of homes, multifamily properties, and commercial
buildings through improved energy efficiency that is comparable to the original
Minergie levels. In cities like Austin, builders and their suppliers have adjusted;
now high-quality materials are readily available, real estate professionals have
changed their marketing strategies, and inspections are effective and lead to ener-
gy efficiency improvements.
Other cities have adopted specific programs. IL 2030 Challenge is a goal
announced by the American Institute of Architects, and endorsed by the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, to reduce building energy use and carbon emissions incre-
mentally, and to achieve net-zero-energy buildings by 2030. The Cities for Climate
Protection Campaign is a program from ICLEI-Local Governments for
Sustainability to assist cities in adopting policies and implementing “quantifiable
measures to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, E
enhance urban livability and sustainability.”
And a growing number of local initiatives are too new to have any reliable
measures of their success but show substantial promise. For instance, the City of
Cambridge, Massachusetts, joined the Climate Protection Campaign and set a goal
to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2015. Cambridge is a dense,
walking-oriented city with very little new construction, so smart growth was not
the priority issue. Invece, retrofitting the city’s large stock of 80-year-old buildings
offered the best opportunity for energy savings. With partnership and funding
from the Kendall Foundation, the city created a nonprofit agency, the Cambridge
Energy Alliance, to help residents and business owners invest in making their
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homes and buildings work smarter and more efficiently to save energy, water, E
money. The city has been mobilizing volunteer climate activists to canvass neigh-
borhoods and offer free basic energy audits and retrofit information to homeown-
ers. Since the program started last August the number of residential audits has
tripled and many retrofits have gotten underway. A dozen or more small business-
es have also signed up. While the Alliance coordinates consumers, contractors, E
banks, utility partner N-Star is monitoring energy use and beginning to measure
success in terms of energy saved and carbon emissions reduced.
While these progressive city-scale programs are already having a local impact,
their true power is in serving as test beds and models to inform and inspire other
città- and town-level retrofit programs across the country. We need to capture the
lessons learned from these early programs and make them available to other com-
munities that are less familiar with energy issues and have shorter histories of ener-
gy-conscious behavior. The structures of the programs in Cambridge, Austin and
elsewhere have important differences, including the relative involvement of the
utilities, the role of various business and supply chains, the approach to auditing
and verification, and the mechanisms for financing. These structural differences
will presumably affect their relative success. We need to ensure that their lessons
learned are captured in a coherent way that helps other communities avoid com-
mon mistakes and copy winning strategies. There are many places to start. Forty-
two out of the 50 United States have taken formal steps to address climate change
through some means, either by a statewide climate action plan or regional agree-
ment. But without a coordinated effort to translate that emerging political will into
practical programs, local governments will keep reinventing the wheel. This coor-
dination must be led by the federal government, and must include a significant
effort to study and synthesize the experiences of these local programs and to com-
municate the lessons and best practices to the rest of the country.
Expand Financing Structures and Explore Innovative Revenue Streams
Innovation is often a matter of figuring out the appropriate financial structure to
allow for a profitable investment. One of the most notable recent financial innova-
tions is the use of property-assessed clean energy (PACE) programs, in which
municipalities loan money to homeowners to install efficiency measures and/or
renewable generation, and the homeowners repay the loans through additions to
their property taxes. This approach has the benefit of tying the repayment of the
loan to the home itself rather than to the homeowner, since the ongoing benefits
of reduced utility bills accrue to the current owner, who may not necessarily be the
owner who arranged for the energy-efficiency improvements. Utility-based on-bill
financing has also been used in a number of programs, in which loans for efficien-
cy upgrades are repaid through the utility bill, with savings offsetting loan repay-
ments in a format that homeowners can understand easily.
While direct savings on utility bills are the bulk of the returns from harvesting
the low-hanging fruit of building efficiency upgrades, other revenues can be had
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through financial mechanisms that are almost completely unexplored. One of
these is aggregating efficiencies from multiple building retrofits and selling them
into carbon offset markets or forward capacity markets. The state of Maine is
exploring how to aggregate carbon savings from low-income weatherization work
for sale in carbon offset markets. The state has noted that this class of offsets is par-
ticularly attractive to purchasers because they are unambiguously avoiding emis-
sions that would otherwise have occurred, and they have a redeeming social aspect
because they lower utility bills for low-income families.
An important development for this kind of alternative financing is last year’s
FERC Order 719, which explicitly permits aggregators of retail customers to bid
demand response into forward capacity markets, paving the way for the possibili-
ty that large-scale retrofit work could be partly funded by revenues from installed
demand-response measures. We also need to extend innovative financing to
renewable energy, where powerful ideas are beginning to emerge, such as power
purchase agreements that permit owners to lease photovoltaic equipment installed
on their building and pay only for the power, rather than for the entire capital
equipment.
Make Energy Efficiency and Cost-Effective Renewable Energy a Priority in
Government Programs
Even in the absence of cap-and-trade legislation, the federal government is heavi-
ly involved in the housing sector, and impacts the rest of the building sector as well.
It is time to look comprehensively at ways to use existing authorities of the feder-
al government: what steps can be taken through executive, departmental, E
agency orders to take us closer to meeting the 2015 E 2020 goals? This recom-
mendation is obvious enough that the Obama Administration has already begun
to work on it, and it is one of the most important topics other than cap-and-trade
in the ACES legislation.
For over 30 years, programs have been addressing energy efficiency in federal
edifici, but it is time to go well beyond the status quo. Federal buildings are in a
position to serve as demonstrations of energy conservation best practices and of
how to positively affect construction supply chains, but they often fail to do so. UN
vital first step is for the federal government to overhaul its approach to efficiency
in its own facilities, seizing opportunities to install all cost-effective retrofit meas-
ures. It can then use federal facility retrofits as a communications opportunity to
advertise cost savings from and best practices for efficiency. This will require bet-
ter resources for the government offices assigned to carrying out these programs;
too often in the past, the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) and the
agencies that support it were not considered mission critical, and had too few
resources to implement even the existing executive orders for efficient energy man-
agement.
It will also be necessary to amend some federal accounting rules, which often
constrain the options that agencies have for financing energy purchases.
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In definitiva, federal agencies should have access to an integrated set of best practices
for planning, financing, implementing, and publicizing energy efficiency upgrades
at their facilities, since projects that lack any one of those components are missing
opportunities to save energy and money while promoting efficiency beyond the
agency’s own properties. Leadership on this issue must come from FEMP, GSA,
and the White House itself.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is involved in
providing housing for millions of people; it has been estimated that as much as $5
billion of its budget goes to pay utility bills in subsidized housing, some of which
is in highly inefficient buildings. This happens partly because HUD allows land-
lords to pass utility costs on
to tenants and the govern-
ment without requiring the
buildings to be energy effi-
cient. It is time for HUD to
energy-efficiency
add
requirements
IL
A
upgrades already expected
of those who benefit from
its programs and to require
landlords to absorb utility
costs if they do not upgrade
their buildings. Fortunately,
important steps
in this
direction are included in
the Fiscal Year 2010 budget
request and in legislation
that Congress is currently
considering.
The federal government is
heavily involved in the housing
sector and impacts the rest of the
building sector as well. It is time
to look comprehensively at ways
to use existing authorities of the
federal government: what steps
can be taken through executive,
departmental, and agency orders
to take us closer to meeting the
2015 E 2020 goals?
The Department of
Energy provides home
retrofit services to low-income families around the country through the low-
income Weatherization Assistance Program; through the Recovery Act, this pro-
gram has received enough appropriations to increase its efforts several fold and
reach hundreds of thousands of homes annually. While the increased weatheriza-
tion is an excellent first step, it is clear that the expansion’s most lasting impact
could be stimulating the expansion of private-sector retrofit efforts by training
weatherization specialists and by integrating and disseminating knowledge of
retrofit engineering. This program is also an opportunity to explore different
retrofit strategies on a large scale, effectively conducting in-the-field R&D on
retrofit technology. By capturing this information and publicizing its knowledge
base about what does and does not work in home retrofitting, this program could
accelerate the entry of new private-sector retrofit companies into the industry.
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These companies could also use weatherization-trained workers to build their core
competencies and expand their workforce rapidly.
Much of the federal government’s support of the housing industry occurs
through organizations that guarantee or subsidize home loans, such as the
Veterans Administration, the Federal Housing Administration, the Department of
Agriculture, E (as of recently) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Infatti, as reported
in the Washington Post on September 7, 2009, the federal government now stands
behind 86% of home loans, a dramatic change from just 18 months ago. These
organizations think of themselves more as bankers than as institutions that can
affect the quality of housing stock. Tuttavia, the government has traditionally pro-
tected its investment by requiring that building defects be repaired before a loan
on that building will be approved. Since the average home is sold every several
years, curing “energy defects”—i.e., requiring a high level of energy efficiency—
before loans are approved may be our best chance of encouraging the volume of
retrofits needed to make a difference in the U.S. carbon footprint. If novel
approaches for financing these repairs and upgrades, such as PACE, become gen-
erally available, the upgrade costs could be rolled into the mortgage or handled
through property tax adjustments. Related strategies include energy efficiency rat-
ing and labeling similar to systems being implemented in Europe, and providing
buyers with a recommended retrofit list beyond those made by the seller. These
mechanisms would allow buyers to comparison shop for energy efficiency and
make it more likely that new homeowners would undertake retrofit work. Another
strategy would be asking the lending institutions that benefit from federal insur-
ance to make energy efficiency a condition of their construction loans and mort-
gages.
If implemented correctly, these approaches, and other variations on them, can
contribute significantly to meeting energy conservation goals. Perhaps most
important, this approach would reduce the chance of the purchaser defaulting, UN
key policy goal in the current economic environment, given that the efficiency
improvements lower the net average monthly costs of operating a building.
Unfortunately, the federal home loan agencies have not yet embraced this harmo-
nization of energy and housing finance goals, as they are under immense pressure
to minimize risk and are therefore averse to any kind of innovation in areas out-
side of their expertise. Actors within the federal government must figure out how
to overcome this reluctance, both by enhancing the level of cooperation between
the financial and energy-oriented agencies, and by clear White House leadership
on the issue.
An added advantage of federal energy efficiency requirements is their educa-
tional impact on the building workforce. If architects, builders, permit issuers,
inspectors, and real estate agents all have to become familiar with energy-efficient
practices before they can qualify for federally-backed loans, this knowledge can
spill over to other construction. If the building supply chain stocks energy-efficient
products and components for the federally-backed market, then these products are
also available to others remodeling their buildings. State and local governments
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have their own set of pressure points to encourage energy conservation, and many
of them will have to act if enough retrofits are to occur in time. Tuttavia, given the
magnitude of needed retrofits, state and local programs will not obviate the need
for strong federal leadership.
Make Better Use of the Power of Codes, Standards, and Data. Give Businesses
the Power of Data and Measurement
One key component in establishing new energy practices is developing strong
standards and building codes and then ensuring that they are adopted. The current
process of developing building codes relies on private-sector organizations to
develop codes through a consensus process among their members. Consensus can
lead to robustness because the concerns of all parties are considered, but it can also
lead to weakness because the parties tend to adopt what is acceptable to a majori-
ty of participants rather than relying on the most advanced technology available.
The new versions of the model codes are adopted by perhaps half of the state and
local governments, sometimes in modified form; this process has led to great vari-
ations in the minimum efficiency requirements around the country and a tenuous
link between research on buildings and the implementation of research results in
the field.
Fortunately, this situation may be improving, at least regarding energy efficien-
cy. Earlier this year, Congress spoke clearly in the Recovery Act about setting a
floor on building quality and energy use. For the jurisdictions that receive the state
energy funding that the act provides, significant amounts of that funding will be
contingent on their making progress towards adopting the current building codes.
For this mandate to have its intended effect, the Department of Energy will need
to take robust steps to track progress in implementing current codes and to help
states and localities set up the infrastructure to ensure that these codes are fol-
lowed, including supporting the training of code officials and building inspectors.
This is a good starting point because our energy goals for buildings will not be met
unless the heartland moves from an informal building culture to one with per-
formance expectations.
The ACES legislation would build on this floor through provisions that require
private-sector code developers to meet specified national targets for efficiency
improvements in their building codes; if they fail, they face the prospect that fed-
eral mandates would supersede the energy portion of their codes. While this out-
come is unlikely and not optimal, the threat of these provisions being enacted is
already giving federal agencies the leverage they need to work with code develop-
ers to encourage them to regularly strengthen the codes’ energy provisions in each
revision cycle.
An important emerging supplement to stronger mandatory building codes is
new efforts to develop voluntary codes as guides for those who want to build
buildings that exceed the minimum requirements. If the Swiss experience is any
guide, these codes are likely to play an important role: they will also serve as initial
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Moving Towards High-Performance Buildings
drafts for the next round of minimum requirements, driving the cycle of continu-
ous improvement and allowing progressive builders and localities to test various
code approaches before they incorporate them into regulations. They also can
serve as the threshold for various subsidy programs, allowing policymakers at all
levels to link incentives to explicit code documents and guidelines. An important
recent example of voluntary codes is the joint effort of the International Code
Council, ASTM, and the American Institute of Architects to develop an
International Green Construction Code.
This development increases the importance of the NIBS standards integration
work described in Henry Green’s article in this issue. While Passivhaus has shown
us how to optimize a building for energy efficiency, the NIBS work will illustrate
how to optimize whole-building performance; for code writers, as well as archi-
tects, builders and their customers, it will provide a framework for understanding
all aspects of what we need from buildings and for capturing that portion of ener-
gy savings that is only possible in optimally designed, high-performance buildings.
Finalmente, it is important to be creative in looking for ways that the IT revolution
can help achieve our goals. The advent of a smart grid is an obvious example and
it should be developed aggressively. Geospatial databases also have a lot to offer;
because a building is at a fixed location, it can be treated as a specific location in
such a database. To enable this use of geospatial information requires standards for
identifying buildings, and a promising effort towards that goal is now underway.
The Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate and the Open Geospatial
Consortium are developing open identifier data formats for buildings related GIS
informazione. This has the potential to be an extremely powerful tool, since it is
now possible to mine geospatial databases for location-specific information on
weather, geology, traffic patterns, neighborhood socioeconomics, and hundreds of
other geographic-specific inputs. The missing ingredient for this approach is the
baseline for the building. If building permit records become automated, we will
have a wealth of information on a building’s size, progetto, and suitability for
upgrading that can be used to optimize original building designs and determine
the likely economics of renewable and traditional energy systems at the property.
Entrepreneurs are starting to see this data as a business opportunity. These data-
bases should also prove valuable to local leaders and planners as they look beyond
buildings to energy savings in communities by properly structuring transportation
systems and locating key facilities and services in relation to concentrations of
edifici.
Make it Easy to Opt for Low-Energy Buildings by Putting a Low-Energy
Infrastructure in Place for Builders, Renovators, and Building Users
Reaching the 2015 E 2020 goals requires major action by three groups: progetto-
ers and constructors of new buildings; individuals with the authority to upgrade
existing buildings; and owners and managers of existing buildings and residences.
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Many builders do not build low-energy buildings because they do not have the
knowledge, supply chain, or financial incentives to do so. As discussed above, IL
level of energy efficiency built into new buildings relates directly to the codes that
are being enforced in building design and construction. Tuttavia, the final energy
performance of new buildings also depends heavily on construction techniques
and experience, so improving the skills of the construction workforce should be a
priority. As small builders improve their skill sets, local jurisdictions should lower
their resistance to adopting adequate building codes and using voluntary codes.
One obvious partial solution is to have the Manufacturing Extension Partnership
(MEP) of the Department of Commerce and the states move toward aiding
builders. Home construction in many ways is a branch of manufacturing, E
builders are increasingly using manufactured components and subassemblies.
MEP has the ability to move the building sector toward adopting lean-six sigma
and other techniques that have brought precision, cost reductions, and energy sav-
ings into the manufacturing sector. Additional certificate and training programs
can be set up within institutions of higher education and high school evening pro-
grams, perhaps in cooperation with manufacturers of sophisticated equipment
and controls.
Financial incentives for contractors’ first high-performance buildings may also
be important. Builders make their profits on the difference between their costs and
the sales price of the building. If it costs less to use a lower-grade window or insu-
lation and the buyer does not complain, it is in the builder’s financial interest to go
with the cheaper alternative. The question becomes how to lower the price differ-
ential between an energy-efficient and an energy-inefficient building to the point
where a buyer will pay enough of a premium for the energy efficiency so that the
builder can make more money by building an efficient building. Demonstrations
may show builders that they really can make money on low-energy buildings. UN
Michigan home builder who builds only Energy Star-qualified homes that cost less
to operate than conventional homes reported steady sales throughout the worst of
the recession. Another possibility is to encourage volume sellers of building mate-
rials like Home Depot to buy quality products in volume, and then to pass on sav-
ings and to offer training in how to use the products, perhaps in conjunction with
Energy Star or federal procurement programs. If energy-efficient products are
readily available and understood they are more likely to be used.
Another key driver is labeling and other techniques for disclosing energy sav-
ings that encourage builders to advertise the fact that their energy efficient models
will result in lower monthly operating costs for the building purchaser. It also may
become necessary to remove the lower-grade products from the market. Just as the
federal government establishes minimum efficiency standards for appliances, Esso
could consider expanding this approach to building components. Since these com-
ponents are manufactured assemblies, it would be possible to sample part of a pro-
duction run and determine if a product meets these standards, similar to testing
for appliance standards. One obvious complication is that acceptable performance
levels for building components would vary by climate zone, an aspect of the regu-
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Moving Towards High-Performance Buildings
latory framework that does not exist for appliance standards. Also, this authority
does not currently exist and would require a legislative change. Ancora, as long as
unambiguously inefficient building components are available on the market, Essi
facilitate poor building energy performance, and a strong case can be made that
these components should no longer be sold in a carbon-constrained world.
Finalmente, reaching rural areas can present a special challenge. The Department
of Energy will have to work closely with the Farmers Home Administration and
state rural development authorities, and the Cooperative Extension Service should
become involved in promoting energy efficiency.
Government efforts must
focus on allowing a private
market, whether it is utilities
or full service energy
efficiency contractors, A
expand quickly.
If we are going to expect mil-
lions of commercial building own-
ers and homeowners to upgrade
voluntarily, we must make it easy
and desirable for them to do so.
Large buildings are often managed
professionally and building engi-
neers handle the building’s energy
performance. Upgrading could be a
company business decision or a
decision by a condominium board
wishing to save money. New laws,
enhanced software, and new stan-
dards are making these decisions
easier. California has just enacted a new law directed at benchmarking energy in
existing commercial buildings, and ASTM is beginning to develop a new standard,
the Guide for Building Energy Performance Disclosure, to standardize the tradi-
tional real estate disclosures as to the condition of the property. The ASTM stan-
dard will cover a building’s history of energy audits, energy and water usage, car-
bon footprint, building certifications and ratings, benchmarking against existing
edifici, and applicable federal, state, local, and utility requirements. This will
provide incentives for landlords and tenants to consider these elements and reach
a contractual understanding on what renovations will be done and what price will
be charged for the property. Additionally, the National Institute of Building
Sciences has advanced its Building Information Modeling (BIM) software to the
point where it has the potential to save, or replace with renewable alternatives, COME
tanto quanto 20% of energy use.
Homeowners will not have the patience to seek out an energy auditor, to locate
the contractors who can do the recommended work, and to function as their own
general contractors. They may also not have the financial means to pay for the
improvements up front, even though the large energy savings would offer gener-
ous payoffs year after year. Therefore, government efforts must focus on allowing
a private market, whether it is utilities or full service energy efficiency contractors,
to expand quickly. This is the premise of the Rebuilding America effort: UN
public/private partnership with the goal of building up a retrofit market and put-
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ting thousands of people to work upgrading 50,000,000 homes by 2020. It is also
worth considering the power of competition and the power of praise and to look
for ways for communities or even subdivisions to compete against each other in
saving energy and to honor those who have been especially successful in doing so.
The point of sale for homes is also an important window of opportunity for
renovation, and real estate agents are important advisors in deciding what
upgrades are made. Perhaps governments at various levels can work with real
estate agents to ensure that energy is a major consideration in these upgrades and
in popularizing labels, energy warranties, and advertising a home’s low energy
usage to teach potential buyers that low energy use increases home value and
reduces a homeowner’s monthly costs. Also, home energy costs vary by as much as
20% depending on the owner’s energy usage and conservation practices. It may be
worth thinking about energy analogies to coupons and rebates, cell phone pricing
plans, and gas station signs as we decide how to motivate consumers. These prac-
tices prove that, if they are marketed correctly, small rewards, pricing schedules,
and prominent display of prices all affect consumer behavior and may have a role
in getting large numbers of people to reduce their carbon footprints.
KEEPING ONE EYE ON 2020 AND BEYOND
We must keep in mind that the carbon reduction goals for the year 2020 E
beyond are dramatic and represent one of the largest re-engineering challenges the
United States and the world have ever faced. At some point in the process, perhaps
as early as 2020, the remaining energy savings in the United States will cease to be
low-hanging fruit and will make economic sense only if significant changes have
been made in technology and government regulation, and the government has
carefully developed incentives to save energy. These changes will be costly in terms
of both money and political capital. We will need considerably better technologi-
cal options, so it is crucial to revolutionize energy R&D now. In his Compton
Lecture at MIT this year, Secretary Chu said that the American energy industry will
have to move from being one of the least likely industries to invest in research and
development to embracing the research spending levels and speed in adopting new
technology that is now associated with information technology or biotechnology.
Worldwide, the challenges related to moving beyond fossil fuels will be greater
because billions of people desperately need to improve their standards of living.
Without a worldwide enforceable agreement on reducing carbon, the fossil energy
not used in this country will be gobbled up by the developing world as it strives to
meet their aspirations. Therefore, research and development into environmentally
friendly technologies is as crucial there as in the United States. It is imperative,
even if it is not possible immediately, to keep pushing for a strong, equitable,
worldwide agreement on fossil fuel use that is then reflected in U.S. law, whether
the mechanism for achieving the limits be cap and trade or an alternative mecha-
nism that turns out to be more politically acceptable.
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As the choices get tougher, strong public support will be crucial. This will not
happen unless the American people feel that the cause is just and the means of
achieving it worldwide is fair to them. In a democracy, it is impossible for govern-
ments to limit people’s choices if they do not have the voters behind them, so it is
important to plan ahead. We need an ongoing, honest, objective public debate
about the severity of our environmental problems and we must collectively make
intelligent decisions in response. The needed changes in laws, the market, E
building codes will happen here in the United States once we cross the tipping
point in public opinion and a majority of people feel strongly that reducing atmos-
pheric carbon is the right thing to do. That is the Swiss experience, and it can hap-
pen here too.
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