Building Energy Resilience

Picture New England in the 1800s: teams of workers carefully cutting massive 500-pound blocks of ice from frozen lakes, hauling them across difficult terrain using horse-drawn sleds and primitive tools. This was the reality of the ice trade that once thrived in Vermont and throughout New England. In those days, refrigeration was a luxury few could afford.

Cx Associates is a mission driven energy engineering firm that works with buildings, mostly Commercial and Industrial buildings, and one of our central missions is to be part of the solution to climate change. Professionals in our field understand the challenge we’re facing. The Biden Administration National Climate Task Force has set the goal of a 100% net-zero emission economy by 2050. To meet this goal, we need to decarbonize the grid, but renewables account for just 13% of electricity generation in the U.S. While that’s close to a tripling of levels a decade ago, we still have a long way to go.

Over the last few years, climate action has become a central focus for governments, and the business case for doing something about climate change has become clearer than ever before. With this shift, “Net Zero by 2050” is a term that seems to get thrown around by organizations, businesses, and municipalities alike. But what does it mean, and how do we get there? We continue our endeavor to answer this question in the second part of this two-part blog.

Last month, at the close of Vermont’s legislative session, the House and Senate agreed to create a Legislative Working Group to investigate reforming VT’s Renewable Energy Standard (RES). This is a big deal because the RES sets the rules by which Vermont utilities claim their electricity is renewable. And now those rules might change.

Over the last few years, climate action has become a central focus for governments, and the business case for doing something about climate change has become clearer than ever before. With this shift, “Net Zero by 2050” is a term that seems to get thrown around by organizations, businesses, and municipalities alike. But what does it mean, and how do we get there?

Your building’s climate impacts begin with every mechanical, electrical, and envelope system on which it’s built. Identifying effective greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction measures requires an in-depth knowledge of a building’s systems and how they interact. That’s where our decarbonization service can help.

How much greenhouse gas is in our electricity? This question isn’t just academic for those of us working to decarbonize buildings. In applications that use some combination of fossil fuel and electricity—which is common!—controls strategies for decarbonization depend on being able to make GHG comparisons between fossil fuels and electricity. These scenarios play out in day-to-day commissioning work.

Last year, Cx Associates committed to offsetting the environmental impact of our business operations. After thorough research, we selected Carbonfund.org’s Carbonfree® Small Business Partnership Program. Through this initiative, we’ve neutralized nearly 80,000 pounds of carbon emissions from our estimated annual business operations for 2019 and will continue to do so on an annual basis.