NBI News December 2008
NBI Names New Directors, Welcomes New Sponsor
NBI has grown in size to meet the demands of our increasing portfolio of projects. The organization’s Board of Directors has played a central role in this important work, and it was time for expansion there as well. New board members are: Marge Anderson of the Energy Center of Wisconsin, Martha Brook of the California Energy Commission, Mark Eggers of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and Brendan Owens of the U.S. Green Building Council.
“New Buildings Institute is uniquely positioned to help state and local governments achieve aggressive levels of energy efficiency in buildings through the development of best practice guidelines and recommendations for mandatory and voluntary standards,” said Martha Brook of the CEC. “My new board membership will provide the California Energy Commission the opportunity to continue to benefit directly from the technical and political leadership available from NBI's staff and other board members, which will help California meet its aggressive goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state,” she said.
NBI also acknowledges the contributions of outgoing Board Members Brian Henderson and John Wilson and thank them for their long-standing service to the organization.
In addition, Pacific Gas & Electric has joined NBI as a utility sponsor. “It’s in great part due to the enthusiastic backing of our sponsors that NBI thrives and continues its leadership role in making high performance buildings a reality, said NBI executive director Dave Hewitt. “Pacific Gas & Electric’s support of these efforts is invaluable and much appreciated,” he said.
Core to Code
With support from Energy Foundation, NBI is developing strong partnerships in the codes arena and offering cities and states support to develop advanced energy codes.
At the regional level, the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships and the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance have all undertaken projects that look at advanced codes within the states they serve. Environment America (formerly PIRG Energy) and BCAP (Building Energy Codes Assistance Project) have both targeted states where they believe substantial code updates are possible. Nationally, NBI has developed Core Performance under its Advanced Buildings program, which offers a credible and cost-effective approach to achieving widespread energy performance through advanced energy codes in commercial buildings. Working together, NBI and these regional organizations are offering local jurisdictions resources and services to adopt advanced energy codes using a codified version of Core Performance as a basis.
“There is tremendous activity in this area and strong leadership by multiple governors and mayors of large cities,” said Dave Hewitt. “I expect commercial energy codes to take a significant jump beyond ASHRAE requirements. NBI’s standing as a “reach code” developer is being realized in a very significant way,” he said.
Building Performance Review offers useful feedback
NBI’s continued building performance review (BPR) activities seek to provide useful feedback to building owners, identifying better metrics and data collection practices and refining the formats for reporting results.
NBI has conducted several occupant surveys in both office buildings and schools which were scheduled for replacement or modernization. The pre-move survey provides a good means to quantify the effect of the move. Also, explaining the role of this pre-move survey to the building’s occupants helps educate them about the objectives of the new space.
In one recent case, a school district in Washington piloted the initial version of the BPR protocol at four schools. The consistent format for summarizing energy use and insights from occupant surveys proved helpful in focusing efforts, reporting on progress and identifying lessons to apply to future construction. The process is currently being expanded to encompass all schools in the district. By consistently applying occupant surveys as schools throughout the district are modernized, they will develop a solid benchmark for measuring and maintaining improvements.
Average functional comfort before and after renovation
+2 = most comfortable; -2 = least comfortable
For another project, working with a major real estate developer, NBI customized its basic occupant comfort survey to solicit more detail on the HVAC, operable windows and daylighting performance in one of their newer properties. Occupants were found to be generally more comfortable than in typical offices. Room for improvement was found in areas such as controls usability and underfloor air pressure. This feedback was particularly useful for both optimizing the current building and gaining lessons to be applied to future construction. Building on the results of this initial review, the developer is working with NBI to design a system for the ongoing collection and reporting of key performance indicators in a much larger portion of their portfolio.
For more information on NBI’s Building Performance Review services, contact Cathy Turner, NBI, at 360-567-0950 ext. 104.
USGBC Research Funding Awarded
In early 2008, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) committed $2 million for a research grant fund to underscore the critical role that research plays in advancing building science and market transformation toward environmental and human sustainability. USGBC contracted with NBI to support the grant process, including writing the RFP, assisting the proposal review process and developing statements of work for selected proposals. Over 200 pre-proposals were received, 38 of which were invited to proceed to the full proposal phase. The submissions spanned a broad range of topics, including K-12 school facility research. The highly competitive field was narrowed down to 13 final selections, which received grants ranging from $90,000 to $250,000. See the USGBC press release for further information and links to abstracts.
Students Compete for Sustainable Design Award
The 2007-08 Leading Edge Student Design Competition winners have been announced. This year’s top entries presented sophisticated architectural designs including extensive use of daylighting, natural ventilation, solar shading, passive cooling and use of sustainable materials. NBI manages the contest on behalf of Southern California Edison, the California Energy Commission, Pacific Gas & Electric and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
“The entries displayed serious conceptual thought, considerable graphic effort and elegant synthesis of technology and design,” said Design Judge Alison Kwok, of the University of Oregon. “We were impressed by the integrated approach, particularly the ones which tested, retested and validated their ideas using simulation programs, simple guidelines and tools that are critical to conceptual development and schematic design.”
Visit the Winners page of the competition website for complete results and links to photos of the exceptionally creative entries.
NBI Staff Continues to Grow
We’re pleased to welcome Liz Whitmore and Tammie Ellis to our team.
Liz will be working as a Project Manager on a half-time basis, initially focusing her efforts on our Office of the Future and Advanced Buildings programs. An architect with a strong background in construction management, Liz brings to NBI 14 years of experience successfully managing multi-million dollar commercial retail projects. In addition to her professional pursuits, Liz serves on the school board in Hood River, Oregon.
Tammie is providing administrative and project support to the Vancouver-based staff.
New Buildings Institute in the News
NBI Technical Director Mark Frankel was featured in the October issue of Architect Magazine. The piece addresses the performance of LEED-rated buildings and explores the findings of NBI’s USGBC-commissioned report “Energy Performance of LEED for New Construction Buildings.”
NBI’s senior analyst Cathy Turner and Communications Director Stacey Hobart summarized the outcomes of the LEED building study (24MB PDF), conducted by NBI, for Lessons Learned. The publication was distributed at GreenBuild 2008.
Stacey Hobart also contributed to the inaugural edition of CitiesGoGreen, with its article “The Spectrum of High Performance Buildings” describing the path of continuous improvement necessary in order to reach low-energy buildings.
Read what Senior Program Manager Mark Cherniack and Jim Edelson have to say on the topic of codes in their article “Advanced Energy Codes Lead to Major Savings” prepared for the November edition of Consulting-Specifying Engineer magazine.