Building Energy Resilience

Energy performance equals building resilience, or so we firmly believe here at Cx Associates. When we named this blog “Building Energy Resilience” Vermont had recently experienced the devastating effects of Tropical Storm Irene. Now, a year later, we continue to seek ways to ensure buildings can survive severe storms with the least possible disruption. According to Environment America, 4 out of 5 Americans live in areas that have been federally designated as having weather related natural disasters in the last six years! Since the vast majority of us continue to emit more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed by natural systems on the planet, we need to begin to look at the tools available that will allow us to survive the impacts of an increasingly dynamic and unpredictable climate.

Benchmarking is on my mind. I've been reviewing the project submissions for the Vermont’s Greenest Buildings Awards and am so impressed by what some teams are achieving in designing and operating energy efficient buildings that use far less than “typical” buildings. The only way we can know how good (or bad) our buildings are is to benchmark them. Benchmarking is a process where we calculate the annual energy intensity (kbtu/sf/yr) – adjusted to reflect weather variations from “normal” which is known as “normalizing” the data for weather. This number is like the building’s miles per gallon and can be used to find out whether the building is an energy sipping hybrid, a typical mid-sized sedan or a guzzling SUV.

Over the weekend I connected a tank of the refrigerant R-290 to my gas grill, fired it up, and had some delicious fresh grilled Vermont sweet corn on the cob. Very tasty.

It is common knowledge in the architecture/engineering (A/E) professions that buildings consume a large portion of the total energy consumed in the United States (approximately 40 percent)[1]. This awareness serves as an essential motivator for the green building movement and the associated energy efficiency agenda in the A/E industry. As a growing number of building professionals work to improve the efficiency and sustainability of the built environment, it is worth considering how progress toward a more efficient and sustainable built environment may be constrained by industry conventions, standards, and disciplinary boundaries. You can view the industry’s concept of “whole building” energy consumption as one such constraint.

The Vermont Green Building Network (VGBN), the Vermont Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), recently decided to offer an award to recognize sustainable buildings in Vermont. As a VGBN Board Member, I reached out to peers during the award development process and heard a common theme – we need to recognize buildings that have proven energy performance. People stressed this approach because the owners who are hiring architects, engineers and other consultants often can’t tell which ones have the unique expertise and skills that will result in truly high performance buildings. Many owners perceive all professionals who submit proposals as qualified and they use price as the means for selection.

What is a ground source heat pump (GSHP)? A heat pump is an air conditioner that can cool in the summer and heat in the winter. The ground source part means that the heat removed from the building in the summer and the heat added to the building in the winter goes to and comes from the ground.