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Passive House and BuildingEnergy 13

January 30, 2013 By 2 Comments

Passive House and Building Energy 13

One person has single-handedly transformed the conversation about high-performance building in the US, and it only took her a couple of years to do it. Katrin Klingenberg of PHIUS deserves enormous credit for the speed and passion with which the Passive House standard has gained traction in the US.

I first heard Katrin speak in the spring of 2008 and was so taken by her Passive House message that a few weeks later I found myself in Urbana IL participating in the very first North American-based Passive House Consultants training. There were maybe 25 of us in that class. It was hard. I was hanging on by my fingernails. But it seemed important—really important.

I wasn’t alone in thinking so. The Passive House message spread rapidly beyond that first training session, to the point where Passive House content has been central to the past several Building Energy conferences, as well as to similar conferences around the country.

Just what is it about the Passive House standard that enabled it to gain traction in the green building movement in the US so quickly?

I think there are three interrelated reasons: First, fertile ground for the message; second, the message itself; and third, the audience for that message.

Fertile ground. Two things were happening in 2008 that made Katrin’s timing particularly fortuitous:
One was a growing awareness that the green building movement in general had done a much better job of fostering awareness of the need for change than of fostering change itself.
The second was the mounting realization that twenty years of apparent economic boom had in fact been a bubble, largely inflated by a steady supply of cheap, disposable housing. As a nation, we had spent endless sums on real estate and had precious little of lasting value to show for that investment. Something seemed profoundly wrong with the way we were thinking about our housing stock—at every level.

The message. Katrin’s message was itself simple, quantifiable, and useful.
Simple, in that there were just three criteria, and they were pass-fail: either you met the criteria, or you didn’t. Passive House distills a whole range of objectives and priorities into those three criteria, and for those of us who are better with black-and-white than with nuance, this was really intriguing.
Quantifiable, in that the criteria were expressed as just three numbers: 15, 120, and 0.6. This is as objective as it comes: No backsliding or wiggle room or “yes, buts” or credit for bike racks in this world.
Useful, in that you could be pretty sure that if your building met those three criteria, there was a good chance it was going to be part of the long-term solution to the energy and environmental issues we face rather than the ongoing part of the problem that so much new construction seemed to be.

The audience. I think that those who heard Katrin’s message had two kinds of response:
One response was a kind of relief, if that’s not an odd way to put it. The same sort of relief that you feel when the doctor finally is able to diagnose the ailment you’ve been suffering from: Once you’re able to give it a name, you start to know what the treatment should be. Many builders and architects sensed that “green building” was less and less a meaningful or useful term, but didn’t have a clear idea of what to do about, or where to go next. Passive House provided a possible answer, and it was a particularly compelling one for the reasons noted above.
The second response is what I call “green macho.” The sorts of builders and architects who go to Building Energy conferences love the hard stuff. I’ve never seen a group of small business owners get so gleeful about how hard they can make things for themselves. Since Passive House seemed much harder than what we had been doing before, it went without saying that it also had to be much better than what we had been doing before. Only among the NESEA crowd is “It’s really hard” a winning marketing strategy.

As a result of the message and its receptive audience, there are now conversations taking place in the NESEA community on a scale that could not have occurred without Katrin’s introducing us to Passive House—conversations about topics like energy intensity, primary energy versus site energy, thermal bridging, solar heat gain coefficient, extreme air tightness. Yes, these are all topics in which several NESEA practitioners are national experts, but pre-Passive House these were terms and ideas that had not penetrated our language nearly to the extent that they have since. Some things just sound more convincing when said with a German accent, I guess. (This, of course, would be the place to plug Eberhard Pauls’ talk on heat recovery ventilation, which will be presented with a distinct German accent at 2PM on Thursday of BE13, with Andy Shapiro moderating.)

Our annual Building Energy conference is, of course, just around the corner, and BE has always been as much—if not more—about asking good questions as about getting good answers. Although Passive House has provided us with some really interesting answers, it’s time to consider the even more interesting questions that it poses.

Some are already getting a good airing:
You can use a massive and intricate Excel spreadsheet programmed by a team of German engineers (also known as PHPP) to design a low-mass passive solar home in 2013, and it will be almost as prone to overheating as the one your ancestors designed on the back of envelope, way back when Microsoft was still based in Albuquerque. How to deal with that?
Marc Rosenbaum has written convincingly about his concerns that holding a building in northern Vermont to the same annual heating demand as a building in San Francisco, for instance, inevitably leads to a poor allocation of resources. How to correct for this, without losing any of the rigor of a standard like Passive House?
Marc has also made the case that what we really need is a per-person energy budget, not a per-square-foot budget. It’s always easier to reach a lower level of energy intensity with a larger home than with a smaller home (if you don’t know why, be sure to attend Bruce Harley’s session on “Energy Calculations for Everyone” at 8:30 AM on Thursday of BE13). Should we adjust the standard to discourage larger homes, as LEED-H has done? On the other hand, do we really want to encourage the construction of more small, detached single-family homes, with their greater energy intensity?

Others questions are proving to be non-issues:
When I took the Passive House consultants training class in 2008 the big anxieties were hitting 0.6 ACH@50, getting good windows, and finding decent HVAC equipment. Within a year of that class’s graduation, it was clear that 0.6 was a non-issue—early adopters of the standard were blowing past that (no pun intended); that the marketplace soon enough was going to take care of getting us good windows; and, finally, that the Japanese were more than happy to provide some really very good equipment that could easily handle the H and the AC in HVAC, if not the V (which the central Europeans, in turn, seemed to have a good handle on). As with learning any new language, some early stumbling in Passive House has given way to near-fluency.

Finally, though, there are some questions that are only starting to be asked:
Passive House does not, by itself, come even close to representing the radical transformation that the design and construction world needs to experience in order to do its part towards addressing the energy and environmental challenges coming our way. It is quite easy to construct a new building to the Passive House standard that, in the end, makes us all a little worse off rather than any better off—because it’s too big, because it’s too far away from low-carbon transportation, because it further develops a region where water resources are close to the breaking point, because the purpose served by the new building is superfluous, because a retrofitted or restored existing structure could have served the purpose just as capably if maybe with slightly higher up-front costs. Is there a risk that Passive House will prove to be the next effort that, like LEED, makes a lot of well-meaning people feel really good about doing things that, in the end, don’t adequately change our current trajectory—that it ends up as a noble distraction?

Taken by itself, Passive House is an idea that most assuredly and effectively slows the pace at which we are heading towards the cliff—but by itself, it does not put us into reverse, headed away from the cliff.

To do that, we need more than Excel spreadsheets, truckloads of insulation, and blower doors with D rings. To do that, we need imagination, determination, and humility borne of experience—three things you will find in abundance at Building Energy 13.

Here’s the Passive House content featured at Building Energy 13…

Workshops:

Building Passive House Homes – Details, Process, Lessons Learned
Workshop Speakers: Declan Keefe, Placetailor; Chris Corson;, EcoCor Design Build Matthew O’Malia, G O Logic, LLC: Alan Gibson, G O Logic, LLC

An Introduction to PHPP (Passive House Planning Package) Software
Workshop Speaker: David White, Right Environments

WUFI Passive Workshop: Next-Gen Modeling Tool for Passive House and Building Professionals in North America
Workshop Speaker: Katrin Klingenberg, Passive House Institute US

Commercial Passive House Design Principles
Workshop Speaker: Adam Cohen, Structures Design/Build

Getting Real About Primary Energy – What it Means for Passive House Standards in North America
Workshop Speaker: Katrin Klingenberg, Passive House Institute of US

Sessions:

Passive House Standard: Suitability for the Mainstream Market
Session 6: Thursday March 7, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Session Speakers: Alan Gibson and Matt O’Malia, GO Logic

Three Completed Commercial Passive House Projects: Center for Energy Efficient Design, Malcolm Rosenberg Center for Jewish Life and Hickory Hall
Session 6: Thursday, March 7, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Session Speaker: Adam Cohen, Structures Design/Build, LLC

Heat Recovery Devices: Evaluation Criteria for Equipment Efficiency and Heating in a Passive House
Session 6: Thursday, March 7, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Session Speakers: Eberhard Paul

Floor show demos:

Stage 2, 4:30 Wednesday: Katrin Klingenberg on “Cool Passive House Gadgets”

Filed Under: BuildingEnergy Conference & Trade Show, Green Building, Industry, member post, NESEA, Sustainable Building

We’re All Frontline Public Health Workers Now

January 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment

About a month ago, a new job title was thrust upon me. It happened at a training session with Ellen Tohn. Ellen, who is a nationally recognized expert in healthy housing, informed the room that, like it or not, all of us who work in high performance residential building are also front line public health workers.

This is not simply a clever way of restating the obvious—namely, that pollutants and other health risks abound in our buildings. For when we take seriously our responsibility to provide a healthy home environment for our clients, we are challenged to reexamine many aspects of our practice, from questions we ask at initial sales meetings to post-project monitoring. At least this has been my experience.

A few years ago, I was tasked with developing healthy home guidelines for Byggmeister. We had growing concerns about the health risks associated with indoor air pollution. And while we had a good handle on how to ventilate homes properly, we were realizing that ventilation alone could not ensure good indoor air quality, and that we needed to pay at
least as much attention to source control.

The very first person I contacted for information and advice in developing our guidelines was Ellen. What is the impact of weatherization on radon levels? How does dampness affect the risk of being diagnosed with asthma? How much do kids benefit when we replace windows that have lead paint? Ellen not only helped answer these questions, she also gave very practical advice about when and how to test for indoor pollutants and how to respond when we find them. In short, she has been instrumental in helping Byggmeister align practices with the most up-to-date research and guidance on source
control.

She could help you too, if you attend her and Jonathan Wilson’s session at BE13. Ellen and Jonathan, who are both healthy housing superstars, will be speaking on “Health Opportunities and Pitfalls of Energy Upgrades—What Doesn’t Smell Can Still Hurt Us.” They will be presenting new EPA guidance for protecting occupant health during energy
upgrades as well as data on changes in occupant health after weatherization.

According to the session description “it’s a must know subject for programs and companies seeking to minimize liability issues and improve client health.” As someone who has instituted major practice changes based on the expertise that Ellen and Jonathan will share at this session, I couldn’t agree more.

Filed Under: BuildingEnergy Conference & Trade Show, Industry, Sustainable Building

Guru of HRV’s coming to BE-13

December 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In January of 2011, I had the great privilege to travel to Upper Austria and Saxony, with an intrepid crew of NESEA stalwarts, Tom Hartman, Chris Benedict and Paul Eldrenkamp (Paul wrote about it here), to look at and report back on the state of the art high performance buildings in a region with some of the world’s most advanced buildings and government programs for support of same.  The limits to growth have been obvious for at least centuries in that part of the world and I attribute at least some of the social consensus to actually do something about it to that environment.  And some to clarity about really needing to work together in this world, as opposed to the American Cowboy mentality we work so hard to grow out of.

One of the highlights of that trip was meeting Eberhard Paul, of the Paul Company where some of the most efficient and advanced residential heat/energy recovery ventilators in the world are made.  Paul’s cores are used in at least some of the Zehnder products which the Passivhaus US folks have helped popularize in North America.  (Thanks, PHers!)

Eberhard toured us around his factory, sat us down in their conference room to answer any questions we had, and at the end put on a small feast for us, to which he had invited architects and others with whom we might have interests in common.  This level of hospitality was the rule, not the exception on the trip, and we heathens have lots to learn about how this level of effort creates community and engenders a feeling that the visitor is well respected.  (Anyone care to join me to take Eberhard out to dinner when he comes to BE13?)

The factory was amazing – an immaculate, well organized place, from machines forming thin plastic plates of the heat exchanger core, with patented patterns that achieve counter-flow performance, to assembly stations, some automated, to a showroom with an amazing array of HRV’s that we can dream of, from large units coupled with sophisticated controls, to tiny but efficient units that fit in the soffit above kitchen cabinets!

The talk we had in his conference room was a geek’s dream!  I asked about why their effectiveness numbers were higher than ours for similar equipment, and Eberhard proceeded to give us a lesson on HRV/ERV effectiveness testing, and how the boundary conditions you select influence the outcome.  For example, the heat in the home adds heat to air flows in the HRV, and this effect either adds or subtracts from effectiveness, depending on if you are testing the outgoing air stream or the incoming.

Eberhard will help us understand the ins and outs of HRV/ERV efficiency and more at his talk at BE13.  It is sure to be interesting!  I look forward to seeing him again.

Andy Shapiro, Energy Balance, Inc.

Filed Under: BuildingEnergy Conference & Trade Show, Green Building, Sustainable Building

And the survey says . . . NESEA’s Green Buildings Open House has REAL IMPACT!

November 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

For the past 16 years, NESEA has run the Green Buildings Open House tour each year in October in conjunction with the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour. We have helped to organize homeowners and business owners to open their buildings so that visitors can learn, firsthand, about the sustainable energy improvements the owners have made to their properties.

For most of these 16 years we have taken it on faith that the tours help change behavior – that they help move the market. We have known intuitively that the peer-to-peer conversations that happen as a part of this program influence people to take action. We have heard, anecdotally, from NESEA members who have told us that Green Buildings Open House (GBOH) was their introduction to NESEA and to our community, and that the program inspired them to undertake big energy efficiency projects. But we’ve never had real hard data, from our visitors, to show how widespread the impact of the program is.

Now we do!

In July, NESEA received a grant from the National Grid Foundation that allowed us to develop an online survey to learn more from GBOH visitors about how the program affected them. The survey is being administered in three rounds – the first round occurred before this year’s Green Buildings Open House tour, and the second round was sent out two weeks after the October 13th tour, and the third will be sent within the next two weeks.

Survey results are still being collected, but we’ve learned a lot already. The things we’ve learned so far include:

Of the first-time GBOH visitors who responded to the most recent version of the survey, 17% have already undertaken energy efficiency improvements to their home or business in the month or so since the GBOH tour. The types of improvements they’ve made include:

  • getting an energy audit
  • air sealing their walls, windows, basement or attic
  • replacing their incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs

Three people even installed high performance systems including photovoltaics, ground source heat pumps, or high efficiency HVAC equipment.

Of the people who made energy efficiency improvements to their home or building, 50% said that GBOH helped influence them to do so.

There are lots more compelling findings to share – and we’ll be doing so much more extensively in the coming weeks and months. But in the meantime, we’re really excited that the results validate that this program is helping to move the market toward more widespread adoption of sustainable energy solutions.

p.s. – Many thanks to UMass student Kelsey Hobson, our Green Buildings Open House program coordinator and survey writer, for all her work to ensure that we have a comprehensive, statistically valid survey.

Filed Under: Communications, Green Building, Industry, NESEA, NESEA Members, Solar, Sustainable Building Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Annual Meeting and the Pretty Good House

September 24, 2012 By 1 Comment

For those of you who didn’t get to join us in Portland for the 2012 Annual Meeting, here’s a synopsis of the Annual Meeting as recounted by Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals’ Robert Howe in his member email titled “Energy Wonks Talk Pretty Good House”.

“Members of both MABEP and the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) spent some quality time together at NESEA’s 2012 Annual Meeting held in Portland this past Saturday evening at the urging of Portland architect Phil Kaplan of Kaplan Tompson, a member of the NESEA board.

The meeting was held at the Portland Public Library and included a tour of the building’s many ‘green’ features. Earlier in the day were tours of other energy efficient buildings in town, led by local architects.

Following some informal networking and munchies, the annual meeting included an introduction of the NESEA staff and board of directors by NESEA President Jim Petersen of Petersen Engineering in Portsmouth NH, and a review of NESEA’s past year by executive director Jennifer Marrapese.

The business meeting was followed by a panel discussion on “The Pretty Good House,” lead by Dan Kolbert of Kolbert Construction in Portland (see photo).

Dan had used the term Pretty Good House at one of the monthly energy wonk sessions hosted by Maine Green Building Supply’s Steve Konstantino at which Kolbert frequently presides. The idea is this: not everyone is going to want to or can afford to build the perfect the house…the net zero energy house…the Passivhaus. So if you have such a client who doesn’t want to go all the way, what do you do?

This sometimes serious, sometimes irreverant, sometimes comical discussion didn’t lead to any hard and fast rules, but did offer some useful insights.

Just about everyone agreed you don’t just walk away from that client, nor do you throw up your hands without trying to get the less-than-perfect client to see the value of building energy efficiency into his or her home.

One panelist opined that a lot of folks want to be half way between the two extremes of ignoring energy efficiency, on the one hand, and being cutting edge, on the other. But others argued that few people strive to be mediocre, and may come around to your way of thinking with a little effort.

Portland’s Paul Ledman said, “If I just had $900 worth of heating oil delivered to my house and then found out that my neighbor has a total energy bill of less than $10 a month, I would covet what my neighbor wants.” For the record, Paul doesn’t have $900 oil bills, but has a total energy bill sometimes less than $10 a month in his unit of the three-unit near-net-zero-energy apartment house he and partner Colleen Myers built on Portland’s Cumberland Avenue. (Incidentally, MABEP members Upcountry Building Inspectors, Island Carpentry and ReVision Energy all had a role in the building’s construction. You can check out Paul and Colleen’s home by clicking here and going to page 17 of NESEA’s online magazine, Building Energy.)

Someone else suggested you shouldn’t leave energy efficiency until the last item on your client checklist, after countertops and other stuff. They will be more inclined to want to include e.e. measures if they aren’t an afterthought.

John Monaghan urged folks to listen to their client and to work with them to achieve the desired outcome.

All in all, it was a lively, entertaining and thought-provoking evening. And that wasn’t the end of it.

Following the meeting, folks adjourned to the comfortable ambience of Grace, the former church-cum-restaurant, a block east of the library on Chestnut St. where we enjoyed good company, drinks and hors d’ouevres.

MABEP members present at the NESEA meeting included Claire Betze, Peter Taggert, Steve Konstantino, John Monaghan, Margo Billings and Bob Howe. An initial discussion about further collaboration between NESEA and MABEP will be continued at the September MABEP board meeting.”

 Learn more about MABEP here.

Filed Under: Events, Green Building, NESEA, NESEA Members, Solar, Sustainable Building, Whole Systems

Marc Rosenbaum Article in BuildingEnergy Magazine

September 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Re-blogged from Marc Rosenbaum’s excellent Thriving on Low Carbon blog:

“I’ve written an article about House 5 in the latest issue of BuildingEnergy, the magazine of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association. It’s got other excellent articles, too. You can find it here:

House 5 article BuildingEnergy

You are a NESEA member, aren’t you? There’s no better community to join if you’re passionate about great buildings. Most of my closest friends and colleagues have come from my 30+ year involvement in NESEA, and the most exciting thing these days is the influx of amazing young folks, ready to take over from the tottering geezers like me! I was the second Lifetime Member of NESEA – it was an obvious choice when the category was created – nothing has had as much effect on my professional journey as the relationships I’ve made within the NESEA community. Join here:

Join NESEA!“

Filed Under: Green Building, Industry, NESEA, NESEA Members, Sustainable Building Tagged With: , , , ,

Profound Gratitude: Remarks by Jennifer Marrapese, Executive Director at Annual Meeting, 9/15/12

September 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Welcome everybody to the 2012 annual meeting of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.

I am really excited that we’re here in Portland. There’s a vibrant green building and sustainable energy community here – a community that has built what they need in the form of the monthly Building Science Discussion Group, Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals, Passive House Maine, USGBC’s Maine Chapter, the Pretty Good House movement and many other formal and less formal organizations and collaborations.

The Portland area has traditionally not been as well served by NESEA as many other areas in our territory. And for as long as I’ve been at NESEA, we’ve been hoping to change that. So I was delighted when NESEA board member Phil Kaplan invited me to Portland and asked us to consider hosting our annual meeting here.

Since our first meeting with Phil and the Building Science Discussion Group in June, many of you Mainers have drunk the NESEA Kool Aid. Architect Rick Renner, a longtime NESEA member, is running for the NESEA board of directors. Sam Strickland is serving on a committee to help us create and launch online communities of practice so that geography ceases to be such a challenging barrier for NESEA members who want to learn and share year round. Steve Konstantino of Maine Green Building Supply has become a business member and opened his facility up last night for an annual meeting pre-game – a Building Science Discussion Group to welcome the whole NESEA community to town.

Profound gratitude. As I prepared my remarks for tonight, that was the mindset I started from. I feel profoundly grateful to this community and appreciative of all that we are accomplishing together.

Let me explain to whom I am grateful and why.

I am grateful to the more than 200 members who are really actively engaged with NESEA far above and beyond simply writing a check and receiving their monthly newsletter and their BuildingEnergy Magazine twice a year. It is surely unprecedented within NESEA that almost a third of our members are actively engaged in planning the conference, hosting sites in our Green Buildings Open House tour, submitting content for BuildingEnergy magazine, and serving on NESEA program and board committees.

I am grateful to Jamie Wolf for recently helping us to articulate something that we’ve known intuitively for a very long time:  that the BuildingEnergy Conference is NESEA’s crown jewel, or the center of NESEA’s universe, but that it occurs only for 3 days/year in Boston. Jamie shared with me his vision for BE365, which makes the BuildingEnergy experience available to NESEA members every day of the year through various events, gatherings, online learning and other forums throughout the year.

I am grateful to lifetime NESEA member Bernice Radle, who at the ripe old age of 26 is rallying a group of NESEA member preservationists to plan a kick-ass Green Buildings Open House tour in Buffalo on October 13th, and who is trying to bring the rest of the NESEA community into the digital age with her incredible promotional savvy using twitter, facebook, blogging and Pinterest.

I am grateful to Marc Rosenbaum, one of our NESEA rock stars, who has partnered with us, and who has spent more than 100 hours to develop and help us launch a 10-week online course for the BuildingEnergy Masters Series, and who recently shared with me, “I could develop and market a course like this on my own. Yet what appeals to me about this arrangement is that I get to advance my personal mission of expanding our collective capabilities, while creating an income stream, and also give back to this organization that has been such a key factor in my success. However, it’s a business partnership, not a charity -  NESEA has skin in the game just as I do.”

I am grateful to NESEA board member Kate Goldstein, who, although she is still a starving student, is digging deep for NESEA this year. Not only did she become a lifetime member – a great investment for somebody who’s still in her 20s – but she has also pledged a leadership gift in our annual fundraising appeal, because, in her words, “The diversity of NESEA’s membership is a gift for us who have not yet found our own path. NESEA is the shelter of our community.”

I am grateful to my staff – at least three of whom, despite being handed a salary freeze this year, have decided to invest some of their discretionary income into NESEA membership because they believe deeply in what we’re about here, and they consider themselves a part of this community.

I am grateful to Paul Eldrenkamp, who confided in me that one of the happiest days of his life was the day that he left his last NESEA board meeting in the mid-1990s. He went and sat in his car for a few minutes and let out a freedom cry that others may have heard even from inside the building. Paul shared that the board as a group (not its individual members) was so dysfunctional, and mired in the day to day operation of the organization, that he couldn’t wait to get out. Well, Paul is a testament to how things have changed for the better. This year, not only is he chairing the BuildingEnergy Conference, and bringing a ton of new talent into the organization through his vast network, but he’s also teaching a BuildingEnergy Masters Series class on Passive House online, and running for the NESEA board!

I am grateful to the 20 or so NESEA members – some long timers, some newbies – who are helping us experiment with and launch active online communities so that they can learn together how best to apply systems thinking in their practices and what are the elements of a generative economy. These communities will serve as a forum in which NESEA members can share with each other what’s working (and what’s not) in service of a more sustainable built environment. Based on what we learn from these communities of practice, we’ll launch others in the new year – including one on Deep Energy Retrofits, one on Zero Net Energy Buildings, and possibly even one on our topic tonight, the Pretty Good House.

These examples barely scratch the surface of all we’ve accomplished together over the past year. And all of this is happening in the worst building environment in 20 years.

In many ways, last year represented the “perfect storm.” Almost everything that could have gone wrong financially, did. NESEA’s membership numbers and Sustainable Green Pages listings continued their steady decline since the housing market crash in 2009. BuildingEnergy registration and exhibitor numbers declined, despite a whopping 97% of our attendees saying that they would recommend the conference to a colleague. We lost substantial donations from two longtime donors whose funding focus shifted and whose portfolios suffered at the hands of a lackluster economy.

We knew before the year even started that we were going to run a deficit in Fiscal Year 2012. We even budgeted for it. We invested heavily in staff, hiring a membership coordinator and a communications coordinator. We also invested in our infrastructure, launching a new website, supported by a new, more nimble database. We knew it would take time for these investments to pay off. Unfortunately, the deficit we ran was larger than anticipated.

NESEA’s reason for being is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment. The rest of the industry is finally catching on as well.

Last year’s bottom line fails to tell the whole story. It doesn’t tell the story of the momentum we’re building, one practitioner at a time. It doesn’t tell the story of the quality of engagement within our membership, within the BuildingEnergy planning process, and at BE itself.

I truly believe that we’re planting the right seeds, and that if we continue to provide quality engagement experiences, the numbers will follow. I also know that we’ll continue to learn and adjust the plan as we go!

So I’m grateful. I’m invested in this organization and in this community, not just professionally, but also personally, as I complete my own deep energy retrofit and prepare to showcase my home on NESEA’s Green Building Open House tour, which will be held on October 13th throughout NESEA’s 10 states, from Maine all the way down to Delaware.

Now’s the time for you to invest as well. Invest in NESEA and in our future in a way that makes sense for you. If you’re not a member, join. If you are a member, consider donating or sponsoring above and beyond your membership contribution. Or give the gift of NESEA membership to a colleague to help grow our community.

If you’re a newcomer to our community, invest in your own professional development as you get to know us better. Enroll in one of our BuildingEnergy Masters Series courses and partake in  high quality interactive educational content from the comfort of your home or office. Learn about zero net energy homes from Marc Rosenbaum, the man who’s probably engineered more of them than anybody else in the Northeast. Learn about Passive House from Mike Duclos and Paul Eldrenkamp, a member of the inaugural group of Passive House certified consultants in the U.S. Then connect with others in your class to share what you’re learning and create a community of practice that can meet in person at next year’s BuildingEnergy Conference.

Attend the Building Energy Conference, exhibit there, sponsor. Even better, help shape our content by joining the planning committee for the BuildingEnergy Conference. Register your most recent project for our Green Buildings Open House tour in October. Enter your best work in NESEA’s Zero Net Energy Building Award to compete for our annual $10,000 prize. Submit an article for publication in BuildingEnergy Magazine, our peer-reviewed journal by and for sustainable energy professionals in the Northeast.

Invest in the community that is building your knowledge base, your practice, your career, and a more sustainable built environment.

Before I close, I’d like to thank a few people without whom this meeting would not have happened. First, thank you to our committee of locals who advised us on all of the nuts and bolts decisions we needed to make – from the beautiful location we are in to the buildings we should include on the tours earlier today to the Pretty Good House speaking program tonight. Those committee members include Matt Holden, Steve Konstantino, Dan Kolbert, and Rick Renner, among many others.

Next, I’d like to thank our sponsors for tonight – Sparhawk Group, Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals, and Thorton Tomasetti Fore Solutions. And a special thanks to sponsors Kaplan Thompson Architects and Pinnacle Windows, who are hosting a party after tonight’s meeting at Grace, a beautifully restored church and restaurant with an awesome looking menu!

Huge thanks also to Phil Kaplan of Kaplan Thompson Architects for advocating in favor of holding the meeting here in Portland and for connecting us with all the folks here who could help make it happen.

And finally, thank you to Kelsey Hobson, our summer intern from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. Kelsey came in at the beginning of the summer and flat out handled all the logistics for this meeting, with almost no guidance. She herded a group of benevolent but busy cats to score us this great location, and planned all of the building tours. She did such a great job that we decided to hire her permanently – or at least as permanently as she’ll have us. This is one NESEA emerging professional with a very bright future.

And now, I’d like to welcome to the stage NESEA board chair, James Petersen. James has been a huge champion of our work to “expand the choir,” and has supported these efforts personally by being a NESEA evangelist within his own professional network. James will share with you an update on where the board would like to see NESEA head, and on what your role might be in helping to create our future success.

Filed Under: BuildingEnergy Conference & Trade Show, Communications, deep energy retrofit, Events, Green Building, Industry, NESEA, NESEA Members, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Building, Whole Systems Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Building Energy Masters Series Update: Summer 2012

July 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This spring the first cohort of Building Energy Masters Series students completed the six-week Passive House training, taught by Paul Eldrenkamp and Mike Duclos.  They got a phone call from the instructors on the first day of the class and received a packet with the text book and other NESEA-related materials, then worked their way through a series of videos, reading assignments, quizzes, and homework.  Here’s what they said about the training:

  • “The course load averaged 5 hours per week.  There was a lot of variability in my schedule so I was glad the format was so flexible.”
  • “I learned a ton, but also have new-found respect for how much there is to know to do Passive House the right way.  I can definitely apply what I learned to my job.”
  • “Great instructors – I felt lucky to have their attention for such a sustained period.”
  • Biggest opportunity for improvement: “…deeper and more frequent interaction between the students and the instructors.”

So – a pretty good start, we think.  This summer we’re working on integrating a discussion wall into the course page to promote more interaction within the course, and we’re also going to roll out progress trackers so the instructors can see who’s engaged and who’s not.

A revised and improved version of the Passive House Training will be available this fall, along with two new Building Energy Masters Series Offerings:

  1. Zero Net Energy Homes with Marc Rosenbaum.
  2. Innovation Workshop: Developing & Implementing Nature-Inspired Ideas with Randall Anway.

In parallel, we’re developing a certificate program to for the Building Energy Masters Series – our goal is to build a sustainable program that facilitates the dissemination of deep expertise.  We’ll continue to keep the community informed, and always welcome volunteers or feedback.   If this sounds interesting for any reason, let Mary or Travis know how you’d like to get involved.

Filed Under: Events, NESEA Members, Sustainable Building, Whole Systems Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Green Buildings Open House in the Digital Age

June 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We’re pleased to announce a partnership with our member company EnergySageTM to host the new virtual component of the  Green Buildings Open House (GBOH) program. The virtual tour supports NESEA’s Green Buildings Open House program which allows participants to visit host sites to see firsthand the renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements implemented in their communities. In 2011, more than 10,000 people toured 504 GBOH host sites throughout the Northeast, including homes, businesses, and public buildings.

“In partnering with EnergySage, we hope to provide participants with a deeper, more robust experience as they tour this year’s projects,” says Jennifer Marrapese, Executive Director of NESEA. “Our mission to drive broader adoption of energy efficiency and sustainability is directly aligned with that of EnergySage. As consumers learn from their peers who have successfully implemented renewable solutions, and become more familiar with these technologies, they are more likely to start using them themselves.”

The virtual complement to NESEA’s GBOH tour hosted on EnergySage.com provides visitors and hosts with new, enhanced features and additional opportunities to discover and be discovered. The property profiles featured on EnergySage.com give each host the opportunity to share detailed information, advice and experience online with potential visitors as well as those unable to physically visit the sites. Online visitors and tour participants learn what motivated the host to invest in energy efficiency and clean energy systems such as solar, wind, geothermal, what advice he or she might have for others considering similar energy investments, as well as the costs and results achieved both in energy savings and financial returns. Because the tour is fully integrated with the comprehensive suite of resources available on the EnergySage web site, GBOH listings are linked directly to additional information such as brand and vendor profiles and reviews, explanations of the full range of clean energy technologies and applications, automated tools to determine appropriate technologies for specific properties, and help with executing a purchase.

A EnergySage home profile

This is an example of EnergySage’s profiles.

For our member network of sustainable energy and sustainable building professionals, the virtual tour is a valuable marketing vehicle for extending brand recognition and increasing a potential consumer’s awareness of their experience and capabilities. Through these customer testimonials, consumers will be able to see the actual results of NESEA members’ work in action. These case studies showcase examples of energy efficiency and clean energy installations across a broad range of applications, property types and geographies, giving consumers confidence to take action for their own properties.

“EnergySage’s research shows that a lack of clear understanding of these technologies and their economics is a major stumbling block to consumer purchases,” said Vikram Aggarwal, CEO of EnergySage. “We are delighted to partner with NESEA on its virtual Green Buildings Open House tour to provide the information and transparency needed to remove these barriers and bring clean energy into the mainstream.”

In more exciting news, on June 13, EnergySage announced that it received a Department of Energy SunShot Startup Investment to further its efforts to make clean energy more accessible to consumers.

Current clean energy system owners can create profiles of their clean energy installations and energy efficiency improvements at: http://www.energysage.com/share-your-experience

 

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

New BE13 Track Announced – Retrofitting for Resilience: Cities

May 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Buffalo, NY is leading the way with new form based zoning codes which will promote sustainable growth citywide.

Retrofitting for Resilience: Cities
Resilience of Cities: Be Urban. Be Environmental. Be Smart. Be Resilient. Be Sustainable.

This year in preparation for BE 13 at NESEA we are opening the dialogue to discuss the ultimate form of sustainability. Sustaining ourselves through good planning, smart building and ultimately being resilient to whatever our climate throws our way.

At NESEA BE12, the keynote speakers discussed the occupy movement, insulation, solar parking lots and city planning initiatives. All of these things discussed happen in cities, therefore we bring you the newest NESEA track for Building Energy 13 – Retrofitting for Resilience: The City Edition.

This new track can go anywhere because there is an enormous amount of material to cover and only 6 sessions. We wanted to take a moment to give your ideas as to where we would like to see this track go which is open but not limited to our ideas. We want YOUR ideas on retrofitting for resilience in our cities.

First thing, lets define resilience: the power or ability to return to the original form, position,etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

Now here are our ideas for sessions organized by themes — presented to spark thinking. Go beyond these ideas and tell us what you want to do! The proposals are due June 15, 2012.  You will find the complete RFP, describing the conference, and the response form at the NESEA website.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Bernice Radle: Bernice@buffalo-energy.com

Robert Leaver: rleaver@newcommons.com

Ideas for sessions/discussions:
Urban Planning

Promoting energy efficient housing, smart growth and urbanism is the ultimate sustainable/resilient environment which can only happen in cities!

  • Resilient community based planning initiatives?
  • Historic preservation
  • Urban planning initiatives – cities – form based codes, historic preservation, smart growth
  • Getting away from the car
  • European initiatives on resilience in cities?
  • Regionalism/urban planning
  • Landbanking ideas
  • Urban agriculture
  • Policy ideas on promoting resilience? What are cities doing? Federal government? Regional initiatives?
  • Urban metabolism (new work at Harvard)
  • Multiple urbanisms: new, landscape, ecological and sustainable with Margarita Iglesia at BSA this spring

Energy Efficiency

  • How can we retrofit our existing buildings and design new builds with greater efficiency? What is being done to our building codes? Mass Stretch Codes? IECC?

    Food production and distribution is important in our cities. Farmers Markets are ways of bringing fresh food into city centers.

Weather/Climate Change/Technologies

  • In one session with a structural engineer, civil engineer and public health official…what happens to Boston in 3 scenarios: a category III hurricane hits; 20 inches of rain in one week; 25 day heat wave…How ready is it now?  What has to change to be ready?
  • Surging seas and cities
  • “Transportable technologies”  – what can we do in the NESEA region that will help other global regions with resilience and adaptation?
  • NYC is investing 1.5 billion to upgrade its infrastructure to be a green infrastructure — the basic idea is to rely more on nature as NYC did when the original grid was laid out

Case Studies/Results/General Initiatives

  • Individual habits, case studies, initiatives that promote resilience?
  • What are cost effective solutions that can help promote resilience?
Filed Under: NESEA, Sustainable Building, Transition Initiatives Tagged With: , , , , ,
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