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Passive House USA Conference and RESNET Partnership

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

(Proxy) Guest Post from the wonderful Jo Lee of Greenmachine PR (and the NESEA Board)

Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) will unveil its new PHIUS+ Verification developed in partnership with the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) at the 6th Annual North American Passive House Conference on October 28, 2011.  PHIUS+ represents the culmination of an alignment of Passive House energy modeling principles with the RESNET Home Energy Rating Score (HERS) used by Federal and local governments and other organizations to determine eligibility for tax incentive and rebate programs.

Up until now buildings built to passive house principles could not be rated on the HERS Index – a Federal requirement for LEED, Energy Star and other rebate and tax incentive programs.  As a result, developers were forced to choose between cost-competitiveness and high performance.

PHIUS+ Verification is designed to overcome this discrepancy and enable developers that build to Passive House principles to rate on the HERS Index.  The PHIUS+ verification process introduces an additional quality assurance and quality control (QAQC) component into Passive House construction processes to meet HERS QAQC requirements. PHIUS+ is also based on the development of conversion mechanisms that harmonize HERS energy models and Passive House principles. This modeling represents a major step forward on the Passive House front because – for the first time – it takes into account the wide-ranging and unique regional climate challenges across the United States.

PHIUS will begin to issue PHIUS+ in January 2012.  In preparation for this date, PHIUS is working with RESNET to develop highly trained RESNET raters to evaluate Passive House projects.  Builders and architects can already begin submitting new projects to PHIUS for full review from plans to completed projects. PHIUS is also working to offer a special, condensed review for projects that have previously received certification from Europe’s Passivhaus Institute (PHI), allowing builders of those projects to qualify for HERS-focused ratings and incentives.

To learn more about PHIUS Plus, please go to http://tinyurl.com/6jmfx89

 

DON’T FORGET! The Passive House US Conference is THIS WEEKEND, October 28t-29,  in Silver Springs, MD.

To view the conference’s full schedule including Passive House building tours and pre-conference workshops, please go to:  http://www.passivehouse.us/phc2011/

To register for the conference please go to: http://www.passivehouse.us/phc2011/about/

Filed Under: Communications, Emerging Professionals, Green Building, Industry, NESEA, Sustainable Building Tagged With: , , , , ,

Local Green – Real Pickles Goes Solar, gets other upgrades with USDA, MA DOER, WMECO boost

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Well, this was certainly inspiring.

Friday’s Greenfield Recorder had a great article on a great local business, Real Pickles (they’re delicious) and their steps to cut their business’s carbon foot print.  What’s even better? They used a local company to do it. Pioneer Valley Photovoltaics was contracted to install a 17kw array for real pickles, and it will satisfy the power requirements for the 6,500 square foot facility, which is expected to save $300-400 in bills, and of course, plenty of carbon.

The whole cost of this process was reported around $100,000 – a good chunk of change for a small business. How did they afford it? According to several press sources they received a 30% grant from the US Treasury and Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources solar/renewable credits to offset the costs, as well as loans and accelerated depreciation benefits to fund this endeavor.

Other upgrades to the Real Pickles facility include new lighting, furnaces, hot water heater, and passive cooling (vents that cut refrigeration costs in the winter by admitting cold air into the coolers .) The Western Massachusetts Electric Company helped out with these upgrades through their rebate program for light fixtures and a grant that paid for roughly 50% of the walk in coolers.

It is truly great to see a local company with scrumptious products making such steps towards sustainability, and equally exciting to see just how many financing and tax incentives there are to make these improvements possible.

Have you made upgrades to your home or business? Let us know!

Read the original Greenfield Recorder article here.

Filed Under: Green Building, Industry, Renewable Energy, Renewable Energy Tax Credits, Solar, Sustainable Building, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Annual Meeting 2011

August 19, 2011 By 6 Comments

You’re invited to this year’s

Hosted by GreenHome NYCSeptember 24, 2011
CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College
(rm. W714, enter at SW corner)
68th & Lexington (6 train @ 68th/Lex)
NYC, NY
5pm to 9pm.

Our Annual Meetings are always great opportunities to meet up with other NESEA members and supporters for networking and engagement, and this year’s is no exception. We’re excited to be holding this gathering in Manhattan, with our great chapter GreenHomeNYC. We are also extremely grateful to CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities for the excellent meeting space.

The schedule of events is as follows:

  • 5pm – registration, meet & greet (with hors d’oeuvres)
  • 6pm – conversations with CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities & GreenHomeNYC about their organizations and upcoming projects/events. We will also be hearing about recent job experiences in a similar format to GreenHomeNYC’s green jobs forum.
  • 7pm – address from NESEA’s Executive Director, Jennifer Marrapese and from NESEA’s Board Chair, James Petersen (of Petersen Engineering)
  • 7:30pm – Our Keynote Speaker, Mr. Projjal Dutta will give his talk “Taking the Car out of Carbon” (detailed below)

There will also be time for Q&A and more networking from 8:30 – 9PM

Mr. Projjal Dutta, Director of Sustainability for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Through his extensive professional background and his present work with the MTA, Mr. Dutta has witnessed great improvements in the energy performance of buildings,  a figure which ignores the often enormous amount of energy required to transport people and goods to and from buildings.  His talk, “Taking the Car out of Carbon” will address the energy impacts of transportation and how they can be improved.

Also speaking at this year’s meeting will be Carina Molnar of  the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities (ISC). She will be speaking about ISC’s City Atlas New York, which is an innovative, bottom-up sustainability plan that provides everyday citizens with a platform to design, discuss, and participate in new ideas for New York City.

If you already RSVP’d and if you’re down in the city on Saturday morning/afternoon and need something to do before the Annual Meeting,

  • Chris Benedict, NESEA member and internationally renowned designer of extremely high performance affordable housing, will personally take you through her latest building under construction in the Bronx. Space is limited, so please let us know if you would like to join this tour.
  • Andrew Padian, NESEA member & champion, will be giving a tour of the Clinton Community Garden on W48th St. between 9th & 10th Ave., a sanctuary mere blocks from Times Square, also starting at 1pm.  Please let us know you would like to attend, as space is limited.
  • GreenHomeNYC has organized a self-guided tour of the Highline (W30th at 10th Ave) starting at 1pm.

Again, please note these tours are open to those who have RSVP’d to the Annual Meeting and you will receive the details once you have done so.

I hope you can join us for this exciting event. Here’s the event info, one more time:

NESEA 2011 Annual Meeting
September 24, 2011
5pm to 9pm
CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College
Lexington Avenue and 68th Street
New York City, NY

Get Directions (Option A on map)

REGISTRATION IS CLOSED AS OF 9/23/11

(Because of security at Hunter, you MUST RSVP to attend;
if your name is not on the list, you won’t be admitted.)

GreenHome NYC

The Institute for Sustainable Cities

Filed Under: Communications, Emerging Professionals, Green Building, NESEA, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Building Tagged With: , , ,

Survey Findings and Reflections

August 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been engaged in a series of surveys and data collection.  Many of you received emails with survey links from Rayna and myself, and some of you heard from us by phone.   We put together surveys around membership benefits and the NESEA website, because we’re in the process of re-evaluating both aspects of NESEA.  It was great to get so much feedback from all of you who participated.  We got a wide range of responses, some passionate, some encouraging, and some candid critiques, and on behalf of Rayna and I, thank you for your input.

With regards to membership, we really wanted to know how you valued your membership with NESEA and what you thought could be done to improve it. Some of the “big picture” questions we asked were:  Why NESEA? What do you like most about membership? What can we improve? On the website survey, we wanted to learn how you use the web and more importantly, how you interact with NESEA online through our website. We asked:  What do you like about the site? What purpose does it serve for you? What would you want to improve?

So, what did we learn?

Membership

What sets NESEA apart as an organization are the members themselves. Many of you are members of other professional organizations, but you joined NESEA (or stayed with NESEA) because of the community – specifically the opportunity to learn from your peers.
You greatly value the learning and information you get from other NESEA members and NESEA programs, and would like to see more opportunity to interact with each other and our conference content. Interestingly enough, many of you wanted more of ‘x’ and less of ‘y’, but ‘x’ and ‘y’ were not the same across the board. We see this as an opportunity (and a challenge) to really make the connections between disciplines loud and clear, and to really show the whole system in action. Keep telling us what content excites you most!
We received a lot of valuable constructive feedback as well. Some of your criticisms were specific  (too wordy in our communications) and others were broader (our thinking and programming is too mainstream/conventional). You also gave us a lot of positive information. 82% of respondents said that they would recommend NESEA to a friend, and 86% of respondents felt that NESEA had met their expectations. Suffice to say, we hear you,  you’ve asked us to do better, and we will be doing our best to deliver.

Website

Based upon our survey results, it would seem that most NESEA members are well connected and well adapted to a 21st century lifestyle.  You told us that used the web for three primary areas: research, reference and networking.  Most of you supplemented your reading material with web content,  including looking for information on the NESEA site or referring someone to the page. You also indicated that you were a connected group; 61% of you said you were involved in some form of social networking platform, with most favoring Facebook or LinkedIn.  In holding with your interest in information and connection, 53% of you said you’d interacted with NESEA’s online postings.

With regards to the website, you provided lots of varied but valuable feed back on the site. Most of you liked the content and color scheme of the website.  Your most consistent criticisms were the need for a search feature on the site, a newsfeed for NESEA updates, and a change in the overall site layout.  This tells us that you like what we’re doing, but we need to make it more accessible and attractive for you.

Personally, I find all the feedback we received to be very exciting. It’s great to see such parallels in the surveys despite asking different questions. Both surveys revealed that you, as NESEA members, value learning and networking opportunities, and that you regularly use the internet to do this. This presents a fantastic opportunity for NESEA as we move forward; using this information we can tailor our membership benefits to provide educational and networking opportunities, and we can utilize our growing web presence to facilitate this process, to better advance the cause of sustainable building.  But you don’t have to wait for a web site redesign to interact with us – you can tap into the online community now! You can Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to and comment on this blog.  There are so many ways to be a part of the conversation to support your interests, bolster your community and ensure that your NESEA experience is top-notch.

Filed Under: Communications, Industry, NESEA, Sustainable Building
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