Name: Travis
Bio: Communications & Development Coordinator for NESEA Do stay in touch! "Like" us on Facebook, or Tweet at us @NESEA_org
Posts
- Zero Net Energy Building
- LEED-H certification
- No Combustion, no fossil fuels
- Attention to Historic Preservation
- 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)
- 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.
BuildingEnergy 12 – What did you think?
March 12th, 2012Thursday, March 8th saw the conclusion of BuildingEnergy 2012, and what a ride it was. We were extremely fortunate to have, in addition to an outstanding cast of speakers, volunteers and international collaborators, balmy weather for the conference. Speaking personally, this was my first BuildingEnergy, and it was simply an incredible experience. If you haven’t already read them, Jennifer, in her blog post, talks about post-BuildingEnergy “re-entry” and gives a shout-out to all the people who made this event so wonderful.
But that’s our take on it. What have other people been saying? Here’s a brief sample of some BuildingEnergy 12 feedback:
“I think this may have been the best NESEA BE conference ever.” John Abrams, South Mountain Company
“What an energetic, dedicated, amazing community! Thanks for all the hard work, organization and passion. This year’s conference again highlighted the remarkable fusion of idealism and informed practice that makes NESEA, and its members, exceptional and effective.”
David Foley
“Thanks to Robert and Paul, their dedicated Track and Session Chairs and special thanks to all the hard working staff and incredible legion of volunteers who pick up the pieces for us mere mortals.”
Joel Gordes
“It never stops! Thanks to all of you (all of us) for this perennial reminder of who we are. Jennifer, Mary, all of the staff and the un-thanked volunteers deserve great praise. They make us happy to ask ‘I am, are you?’”
Bill Stillinger, PV2
“Many thanks to Robert, Paul, Jennifer, Mary & the entire NESEA staff for pulling off another great NESEA experience & for making each one better than the last. The community building pieces as well as several other recent improvements will be studied & replicated (in some way) for future conferences. Thanks for doing so much of the work that will be used to build on for our future.
Thanks especially for making this a tribe that I am most proud to be a member of. I am, Are You?”
Marc Sternick, Deitz & Co. Architects
“May I join Marc in saying a huge thank you to Robert, Paul, Mary, Jennifer and all the staff. You made it look easy!”
Caitriona Cooke
“I have to add my thanks to Robert, Paul, the staff and the whole NESEA Community for a fabulous conference It was a true embarrassment of riches in the best way possible. ”
Laura Notman
“For me, the conference as a whole was very much about beginning conversations and connections that will carry on well past the three-day event. I’m reinvigorated, full of new ideas, friends, colleagues, clients, and connections as a result of my time at the conference. I’m excited by the new opportunities that have grown out of this year’s experience.
This is my experience this year… as it has been for many years… Information, yes,… but even more so… a renewal of a sense of mindful, meaning-filled connection to others involved in the excitement and the challenges of sustaining the people and the planet.
A privilege and honor to share this journey with each of you…”
Bart Bales
“To create an elixir like BE, it takes a unique community of dedicated and passionate visionaries. As an attendee, I’m personally grateful to all of you for creating such an inspiring, thought provoking and enlightening conference.”
Jo Lee, Green Machine PR
“Congrats and thx to @NESEAed and the whole team for another exceptional Building Energy event #be12″ @EnergyCircle
“(BuildingEnergy) was amazing. Truly the center of cutting edge building efficiency. Looking forward to engaging everyone further about efficiency.” @475sam
What did you think of BuildingEnergy 12? Let us know in the comments below, or later in in the soon-to-be-released BuildingEnergy 12 survey.
In the meantime, let’s keep the energy going for BuildingEnergy 13 (no, it’s never too early to start planning for the next event.)
Kim Quirk – Near Net Zero Homeowner, BuildingEnergy 12 Presenter
January 27th, 2012This is was originally posted at EnergyEmporium by Kim Quirk
Creating a Zero Net Energy Building in a Historic Shell
“That’s the title of the talk I am going to do at the NESEA (Northeast Sustainable Energy Association) conference in Boston in March 2012. The conference, BuildingEnergy 12, will be held at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston on March 6-8. There are 10 different tracks of workshops on “renewables and high performance buildings”. Check it out. You can get a ton of information at this conference.
I was very excited to have my presentation selected. All the work we’ve been doing on the renovation of my building has been well documented and I will have a years worth of real data and results by then. I applied to present at this conference last year but my project schedule slipped and my move-in date was too late to get any real feedback as to the performance of the house, so they asked me to re-apply this year.
Ok… so the good news is that I was selected for presentation. The bad news is that the house isn’t performing as well as it should at this point. There are things we are actively analyzing and debugging. So when I got the news that I was on the schedule, I called the session chair to discuss some of the issues and see if they wanted to retract their offer. “Not at all”, I was told. “We expect an audience that understands how difficult it is to achieve zero net energy and we learn more from the problems than the successes”. She assured me that presenting the results with details about issues would be a good session.
So, as I pull together data, information, pictures for this talk I will also put it out there on this blog. It would be great to get some feedback before the conference so I can be ready for the hard questions.
There were 4 goals for this renovation:
You can get more details on these goals by clicking on 78 Main St – Renovation.
I’ll start addressing the 3rd goal in this post since it has been very easy to measure: This house has no fossil fuels. I don’t have an oil tank or oil bill, no propane tank or gas bills, no fireplace, wood stove or wood bills.
But — This house is on the grid and I DO have an electric bill. My electric company is National Grid. Their electricity is made up of about 36% natural gas, 15% coal, 26% nuclear, 10% oil, and 13% other fuels (mostly renewable). So that is not good. My intention is to offset all the electricity we use with local solar PV panels. Right now I am measuring the electrical use so I can design the right size array. The good news is that weather data and insolation (how much sun we get here in NH) from the National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) is pretty accurate so I will be able determine the size of the array based on my use. I didn’t want to put the array in place, though, until I have a good estimate of electrical usage. More on that in an upcoming blog.”
Read the original post WITH GREAT COMMENTS here
A Tale of Two Cities: Sustainable Urban Development in Hamburg Comes to Boston
January 24th, 2012If you’ve been following the movement towards renewable energy, you probably know that Europe is way ahead of us. And you might feel that we’ve got a long way to go if we’re ever going to catch up.
NESEA is hoping to change that with a new international collaboration.
We’re proud to announce an exciting new development with the German Consulate. This year, our BuildingEnergy Conference will feature a session on Sustainable Urbanism with representatives from the City of Hamburg, Germany as part of the Transatlantic Climate Bridge. The German delegation will include Senator Jutta Blankau who will present at the conference Closing Forum on March 8th, and Mr. Uli Hellweg, who will speak at the Thursday session titled “How Hamburg Will Generate 100% of Heat and Electricity from Local Renewable Resources.”
The Transatlantic Climate Bridge is “a joint commitment to invest in newer, cleaner sources of energy can create new jobs and world-class industries, clean up the environment and protect the climate, improve standards of living and enhance global security.” The German Consulate considers their involvement with NESEA to be “one of our major projects“, and given the similarities between Boston and Hamburg and the popularity of BuildingEnergy, it’s easy to see why. Both cities share a similar climate, and as port cities, Boston is ideally suited to channel materials and ideas from Hamburg into the Northeast. BuildingEnergy is the next step, the distribution hub from which the ideas brought over from Germany can be acquired and disseminated throughout the Northeast. And the sustainability industry is ready for them.
Says Mr. Galen Nelson, Director of Intergovernmental Partnerships at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (and BuildingEnergy Session Chair) “The City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts share a strong interest in strengthening our clean energy industry and helping the private sector adapt to a low carbon economy. The German experience in Hafen City, coupled with Boston’s vibrant clean energy eco-system and the state’s cutting edge renewable energy policies and programs create a perfect opportunity to explore district heating systems in the Commonwealth.”
BuildingEnergy is the place to be for new ideas, new friends, and new business prospects. we’re very excited by this new partnership with the German Consulate, and look forward to expanding our international connections.
So, will we see you at BuildingEnergy? I do hope your answer is “Ja!”
Dietz & Co. Architects Project Achieves LEED Gold Certification
January 10th, 2012Great news from the NESEA membership! Congratulations to Dietz & Company Architects on receiving the LEED Gold Certification for their work on a project with the YWCA! This is especially exiting news because Marc Sternick, VP of Dietz & Co, is on our Board of Directors and the firm is a local, NESEA business member.
The full press release is included here:
Springfield, Mass. – Dietz & Company Architects, Inc. has received LEED for Homes Gold certification from USGBC (the U.S. Green Building Council) for the recently completed units at the YWCA’s Campus of Hope. These new units provide housing that serves to transition women from domestic violence shelters to longer-term living facilities. The 32,000 square foot project is made up of 20 apartments and eight congregate housing units within its walls. This project was part of the larger Campus of Hope initiative
that was started more than 10 years ago for which Dietz & Company Architects was the master planner. Dietz & Company Architects also
designed the first phase of this campus: a 60,000 square foot building that includes administrative offices, meeting and classrooms as well as an on-site shelter.
In the finest tradition of the YWCA, this project features cutting edge technology in Green construction, women-owned partnerships and the
overwhelming support of the community it seeks to serve. The project, originally designed to achieve LEED for Homes Silver certification level, exceeded that level by achieving Gold certification.
Several factors that supported the LEED for Homes Gold Certification include: super-insulated walls and airtight construction, efficient mechanical systems that include roof-mounted photovoltaic panels for electricity, sustainable site design and the use of green construction materials. A healthy indoor environment, pollution reduction and lower utility/maintenance costs are also key elements of this certification. This highly efficient building is expected to reduce water and energy consumption by 20 to 30 percent over typical code compliant construction.
NL Construction was the general contractor for this project and the project was supported by the LEED for Homes Provider, CET. The LEED
(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System™ is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for
developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.
EnergySage.com – Choosing Renewables Now Wicked Simple
November 10th, 2011I was excited to learn that our newest business-level member, Boston-area Distributed Energy Research & Solutions, Inc (DERS) has concurrently released EnergySage.com , the latest, greatest tool for researching renewable energy solutions.
EnergySage, in brief, is a web platform designed “to make the case for clean energy” by helping everyone from home owners to facilities managers determine the costs and savings associated with renewable energy solutions.
This is an absolutely vital (and arguably long-overdue) tool. As we’ve covered in previous posts, renewable retrofits, upgrades, etc often involve several contractors or installers and a half-dozen different funding sources, making the whole process seem like an insurmountable task. EnergySage aims to smooth this process, and while it is only a day old, it already delivers.
I took EnergySage for a spin, and let me say, it’s wicked easy. Visitors have the choice of learning about clean energy, why to invest in clean energy upgrades for their properties, and options to get advice from professionals or from the EnergySage.com community. I tried out the wizard, and was greatly impressed by the options and level of detail it offered. Be sure to have your utility bills on hand (or a rough estimate, if you’re just test driving it) so the site can help you determine what services are best for you based upon your needs and energy usage. You answer questions based upon your interest (saving money, etc), property type, and energy needs. And you’re not just limited to one type of renewable energy. EnergySage covers solar PV, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, biomass and biofuel. When you’ve answered all questions, the site reveals the options that are best for you, initial cost of investment, return on investment, and local financing and installation options. You are required to login for advanced options, but you can use your Facebook or Twitter login, further simplifying the process.
In short, EnergySage.com is a powerful, informative and visually appealing way to simplify your clean energy installation and financing decisions, and it’s truly great to be able to count them as a NESEA member. If you’ve been considering a renewable solution for your property, you need to check them out.
And once you’ve used EnergySage to find what renewables are best for you, go see them in action through NESEA’s Green Buildings Open House tour.
Let us know what you think about EnergySage in the comments below.
Gaylord Hospital Adds Solar Thermal
October 28th, 2011This was brought to our attention by a long-time BuildingEnergy exhibitor, Consulting Engineering Services.
Gaylord Hospital is the first in the state of Connecticut to receive state funding through a Connecticut Clean Energy Fund grant for a solar-thermal hot water system. The $323,000 from the Energy Fund will be a tremendous boost to the hospital, which is a non-profit institution. The project is slated to begin soon.
Consulting Engineering Services and partner firms will be installing 70 Solarus Evacuated Tube solar hot water panels.
An evacuated tube solar hot water panel works by converting sunlight into heat, which is transferred to propylene glycol (a gel found in common products like hand sanitizer). The propylene glycol is pumped to a heat exchanger in the system’s water storage tank. The system to be installed at Gaylord Hospital will feed at 3,750 gallon tank that will supply 65% of the hospital’s hot water. This is a huge step – the system is expected to cut the hospital’s fuel consumption by 7,000 gallons a year and reduce annual carbon output by 135,000 lbs.
Congratulations to Consulting Engineering Services and everyone working on this project, and kudos to Gaylord Hospital for making a sound economic and environmental decision to go solar! Anyone interested in learning more about renewable efforts in health care should head on over to the Health Care Track at BuildingEnergy 12
Interested in learning more about NetZero energy? Join us for a net zero event with Mitsubishi Electric in Southborough, MA on November 10th, 2011. Read more and RSVP here!
Passive House USA Conference and RESNET Partnership
October 25th, 2011(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/
Local Green – Real Pickles Goes Solar, gets other upgrades with USDA, MA DOER, WMECO boost
October 24th, 2011Well, 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.
Annual Meeting 2011
August 19th, 2011You’re invited to this year’s
Hosted by 
September 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:
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,
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.)
Survey Findings and Reflections
August 15th, 2011Over 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
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.
