Craig Christensen of the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), showed off the already existing building version of their residential modeling program which is located in California.  BEopt is the Lamborghini of building modeling programs.  Under the hood, they have a finely-tunable mechanism of inputs for envelope equipment, setpoints, surroundings, and shading, and have newly integrated existing characteristics, detailed utility tariffs and cost/benefit tests, demand response, and energy storage – but that’s not all.  BEopt runs on a variety of fuels — the simulation engines TRNSYS + DOE2 or EnergyPlus.  Its most unique feature is its ability to test a single design (Design Mode), or to test a wide range of possible designs to find the optimal blend of design features (Optimization Mode), where a cost-energy “swoosh” distribution lays out the options, and shows those closest to the sweet spot.  The engine doesn’t assume efficiency first, but usually recommends it to a point, which then is cheaper to add PV.

Many other modeling tools exist but are usually specialized for renewables or efficiency. A few provide output standards to allow sharing among tools and between PV and EE service providers.  “Integrated tools will encourage integrated projects,” says Devan Johnson of kW Engineering.  The model developed by the team of kW Engineering, SolarNexus, Inc and SaveEnergy123 defines an IEP (Integrated Energy Project) and proposes an open XML standard to speed collaboration and integration of existing tools.  There are schemas for several categories of project data — from existing site and building features to energy systems, utility data, stakeholder information and proposed measure –as well as common schemas to interlink these data.

Seeing these tools in action really brings them to life.  The team from ConSol used BEopt to optimize their low-cost smart-grid-ready solar re-roof project, designed to a target installed cost of less than $4.25/W, including a Home Energy Management system and demand response controller.  A simple mounting assembly with a plug-and-play microinverter electrical interface (as simple as standard home wiring) require no special tools for installation, so a roofing contractor can install it.  This installation cost savings dramatically reduces first costs of the system.  In their showcase home, the team paired a 2.4 kW PV system with a package of energy-efficiency retrofits that amounted in BEOpt to a 30.5% energy savings without PV, and 55% with PV – a clear demonstration of the synergy between load reduction and supply. Actual production of the system came out at 10% better than PVWatts estimates.

Photo Credit: UC Davis West Village Project

Taking the PV-EE synergy to the community level, a partnership between UC Davis and Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3) produced the West Village Project, which is part of UC Davis’ zero net energy community initiative.  1900 student beds were already close to Zero Net Energy on an annual basis, and the team wanted to model the solutions for 343 single family homes at no higher cost to developer and owner.  BEopt allowed them to model many possible solution packages, maximizing energy efficiency where feasible and integrating both PV and biogas to cover annual energy use.  The models also considered shifting conditions, from future economics to policy changes.  The team’s conclusions were that the best package had an incremental cost of around $5000 for a 22-30% energy reduction over California’s Title 24 standards.  The number of homes constructed greatly affected the economic feasibility, but all their modeled batches (30, 60 and 90) compared favorably against the neighboring conventional homes.  Economics were more favorable for a natural gas (rather than all-electric) strategy, and without electric vehicle storage.  In all situations, they concluded that Zero Net Energy is possible with little to no incremental cost to homeowners given the current state of incentives and smart development.

The key is to properly size PV at that sweet spot between the price of efficiency and the price of PV.  While customers often go for the easy but more expensive PV first, it makes natural sense to design and implement them together. Common data is collected to perform the design analysis, and they will perform reciprocally in the built reality.  The overall return on investment on combined EE and PV projects is better than for PV alone, and with evidence from the integrated modeling tools and their brainchild projects will help efficiency and supply to penetrate the market as a winning duo.

Benedict Park Place 5B [Photo Credit: B+Y Architects

Benedict Park Place street view [Photo Credit: B+Y Architects

Bridges over the detention system buffer ground-level units from the street [Photo Credit: B+Y Architects

14 rowhouses used modular construction; they were transported only 46 miles, and set up in 6 days. [Photo Credit: B+Y Architects

As technology matures, it slips into the mainstream in price as well as in practice.  The design team cited Ed Mazria’s Architecture 2030 prediction that much of our building stock will be new or retrofitted by the 2030 goal, making new construction essential to the broader goal of – retrofitting the urban fabric block by block.  Denver Housing Authority will reinvest their profits in their next piece of the urban puzzle:  “We must develop green communities, not just green buildings.”  Having put my own heart into the architecture of some low-energy affordable projects, I am thrilled to see a project of this quality, on this scale.  The design team prefaced their presentation with a quote from the heart:  “Architecture is a concrete reflection of our ethics and aesthetics.”  If this project is any indication, we are in good hands.

It’s a little ironic that there is a special term for non-artificial lighting (“Daylighting”), given that we have only had an electric alternative for the briefest flicker of our history.  The rewards of daylighting are tremendous, particularly in commercial buildings, and they come in terms of dollars, productivity and contentment.  Lighting can amount to 70% of electricity used in commercial buildings – making lighting efficiency the best way to reduce electricity use.  It’s no wonder that so much scholarly effort is put to designing daylighting strategies.  At WREF 2012, a Daylighting Technical Session illuminated great daylighting tips, and some of the contradictions between simulation and observation, design and practice.

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Scanning Sky Simulator [Photo Credit: North Carolina State University

Presenters had some great rules of thumb.  Windows always have a positive effect on user experience, and should be incorporated for aesthetic reasons, but toplighting was the clear winner for pure function.  The team from the Queensland University of Technology compared light measurements with results of a user perception survey.  They found that toplighting has better consistency and angle on work space than sidelighting, and is most effectively positioned behind a workstation.  Photometric control systems enhance the user experience, and diffuse or redirected light is most pleasing.  The team from North Carolina State University found that the benefits of toplighting are maximized by integrating the skylight into the roof structure and splaying the sides of the wells.  Users need consistency in lighting, across the space and during the course of the day, as eyes tire of constantly adjusting.

The real trick to designing great daylighting is a problem as old as modeling (computer or physical):  the dicrepancy between simulation and performance.  The presenters each found a way around these obstacles.  Another team from North Carolina State University found that computer modeling is inadequate to predict the behavior of the sun and clouds, and of surfaces in the building.  So they stuck with physical models, replicated a 60-degree sector of sky in the lab and correlated its predictions with those of a scanner on the roof.  The Australian team found that even standard measurements in the field often fail to reflect user perception.  Of these measures, CIE Glare Index (CGI) agrees best with reported discomfort in open plan skylit offices and can be used to aid design.

Even when the daylighting solution is mocked up in full scale to the satisfaction of designers, the users may not take advantage of this free lighting.  The University of Oregon team voiced the designers’ frustration: “The daylight is great, but the lights are on!”  As with other best-laid architectural plans, occupant behavior, not design, drives energy use.  The Australian team found that lights were often left on during the day just to satisfy the light consistency needs of the most demanding user of the space.  Moveable dampers for daylight control were rarely used, and were left open or shut.  Occupants need comfort and consistency in lighting, but occupants vary and few take advantage of controls beyond the lightswitch, so the default state of the system settles at “lights on.”

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Office Toplighting [Photo Credit: North Carolina State University

Polar bears aren't enough - people have to see the human face of climate change. [Photo Credit: Ralph Lee Hopkins, National Geographic

Most speakers also acknowledged that the native language of science is greek to nonscientists.  “We are privileged to be sitting here in a dark windowless room talking about this,” says Max Boykoff, author of Who Speaks for the Climate?   Busy people have a hard time committing to a still-emerging problem, and the cautious, hedging jargon of climate change scientists does not have the crispness and brevity required by the mass media competing for their attention.  Tom Yulsman, who began covering the climate change problem in 1984, pointed out that mass media is a mixed blessing to the communication of polarizing issues.  When media is democratized, opinion is untested, experts are devalued, and “civil discourse is out the window.”

All the speakers had solutions for speaking in today’s vernacular.  Max Boykoff encourages us to embrace infotainment – to mobilize analogies and reduce abstraction, and to place hooks (like the hockey-stick curve of carbon emissions and temperature).   Lisa Dilling, of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, had a checklist:

• Emphasize common interest among the stakeholders, as in the Montreal Protocol that has been successful in phasing out ozone-depleting emissions.
• Make action easy.  Recognize that consumer choice is not driven by environmental interests – climate benefits must be built into other desires, as in equipment efficiency standards.
• Stay true to the science.  State what is known and unknown.  Don’t take shortcuts in attributing extreme events to climate change.  The argument must stay watertight.
• Keep goals realistic and attainable, and speak to a reasonable timeframe for solutions.

Drought is predicted for already arid areas. Here, in Gujarat. [Photo Credit: Amit Dave, Reuters

Climate change is still emerging for most people.  There is some consensus on the existence of the problem, but there is polarization on who is responsible, and no agreement on solutions.  By embracing our everpresent graphic media, and by avoiding its pitfalls, we can help the human impact of climate change to become a conscious reality before it becomes a physical one.

Some of the attendees to "Engaging Women in Clean Energy Solutions." (Photo Credit: Douglas Walls)

This Mother’s Day was more than flowers for a stirring crowd at the Denver Convention Center during WREF 2012.  With more attendees than seating, the full-day workshop “Engaging Women in Clean Energy Solutions” began as game of musical chairs (with real music by Sue Blessing.)

Dr. Barbara Farhar, the workshop’s Chair, opened with a moving reminder that Mothers’ Day began as a protest against the carnage of the Civil War.  Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870:  “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies … our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience,” and proposed that women gather“… to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”  Ms. Howe, speaking in a day when women had as little voice in this country as they still do in developing places, would have been glad to hear her expression of the women’s centrality to development so reflected by the work presented today.

Solar Suitcase (Photo Credit: We Care Solar)

Rural solar electrification is the perfect Mother’s Day topic, as one of its most direct benefits is the safe delivery of babies in off-grid areas of the world.  In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman has a 1 in 22 chance of dying from complications of pregnancy.  In response, We Care Solar founder Dr Laura Stachel and Hal Aronson developed and distributed the “Solar Suitcase,” a modular solar power station integrating lights and outlets tailored to the needs of a clinic.  They found that to make an operating room safe required only 15W of power, and observed a decrease in maternal mortality of 70%.  Since maternity wards are customarily a woman’s domain, We Care Solar and their networks recruit and train women in the use and promotion of the Solar Suitcase.

Solar electrification has many other benefits in areas where kerosene is the only source of light when the sun goes down.  Kerosene is expensive, dangerous and emits toxic fumes.  With solar lights, children can safely study for school after the day’s work, a disproportionate share of which often falls on girls.  Elephant Energy and its partners develop and distribute solar lights, and promote their sale through existing mercantile networks in Africa as well as on the home front, in the open spaces of the Navajo Reservation.

Trudie Kayunde was the first mother to deliver her baby under an Elephant Energy solar light. (Photo credit: Elephant Energy)

Clean cookstoves are another frontier where women are the chief adopters and promoters.  “Cooking [in Africa] is not the pleasure it is here,” says Nozipho Mabebe Wright, of ENERGIA Africa.  Biomass burning in the enclosure of the home kills up to 2 million people per year — mostly women and children – inflicting cataracts, respiratory diseases, and pneumonia.  Wright tells of a World Bank-endorsed program to introduce clean, efficient cookstoves, and Susan Kinne, of Grupo Fenix in Nicaragua, shows how international designers collaborate with local craftsmen to create stoves and fuel from local materials.  Clean cookstoves eliminate the treks women make (up to six hours a day) to receding forests, and the greenhouse gases released by burning those forests.  In a policy environment that favors pouring money into education, Wright and a network of women in Africa and Asia advocate for funding for first needs – a clean and healthy home environment.

Grupo Fenix develops solar cookers and other clean techology through "edutourism" of visiting students and professionals collaborating with local craftspeople. (Photo Credit: Grupo Fenix)

This year’s WREF takes place on the verge of June’s “Rio +20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, where 60,000 people are expected to converge in a sequel to the groundbreaking conference of 20 years ago.  Gail Karlsson, ENERGIA’s Senior Policy Advisor, will be there, but like many at this workshop, her hopes are dampened by frustration with the political allergy to clean energy and sustainability that currently keeps it in the realm of science fiction.  “I never could imagine that sustainable energy and climate change could become so political,” she says.  Without political progress on clean energy, all the engineering genius in the world, including that of her two sons, (one at Columbia and one at MIT), cannot make a dent.

It seems that these are not women’s issues — they are everyone’s.  Everyone has a mother, and is here because they were safely born.  Everyone needs clean air, clean water, and food.  Everyone needs a livelihood and to be reared in enough prosperity to support their development, education and dreams.  Men (and the boys who will become men) benefit as much as women do from the initiatives presented today.  If these initiatives can make themselves understood as the needs of whole families, they will not fall on deaf ears.  And if clean energy can be understood as a key component of global development – the reduction of poverty and avoidance of war over resources – then it may attract the political eye.

“If we ignore women, we are limping [on one leg],” said Dr. Abdulaziz Altwaijri, Director General of ISESCO, which represents development interests in the Islamic world.  He spoke to a crowd of both women and men.  The level of energy in this room brightened the hopes of all of us who want to see the benefits of clean technology extended to the developing world (even if we did have to sneak out to call our mothers.)

"SolarCity" at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, outside of Tucson, AZ, was a partnership with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. (Photo credit: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/30/142935396/big-solar-project-moves-forward-without-uncle-sam)

First up was the Department of Defense (DOD), steely sights set on the edge to be gained through energy security.  Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment Dorothy Robyn demonstrated countless current and planned projects in energy streamlining and renewable supply.  As usual, they go big:  they have committed over $1 billion in the next two years in load reduction for existing buildings, using performance contracting.  They plan to shake their dependence on the grid with 3 GW in renewable supply by 2025, leveraging private partnerships, and plugging into advanced microgrids.  If the DOD is investing, you know there’s a payout.  Following their long tradition of “Dem/Val” (Demonstration/Validation), the DOD is not afraid to act as a test bed for emerging technologies, such as electrochromic self-tint windows, membrane-based dehumidification, and beetle-kill biomass gasification.  Camp Roberts is currently testing its new 1 MW solar array, printed in nano-particle ink, heat-seeking that holiest of grails — grid parity.

Ambassador Oreck in one of the channels of the district heating system under Helsinki. (Photo credit: http://www.usembassy.fi/blog/?p=848)

Next up was Bruce Oreck, bodybuilding river guide and U.S. Ambassador to Finland.  Working on his LEED Platinum house in Boulder, I came to appreciate his direct-drive diplomacy.  Bruce doesn’t mince words – he hammers them into shape.  His talk, appropriately, (but to the surprise of those expecting another talk about energy), was about communication.  Our problem solving the carbon and energy crisis, he says, is not about technology – it is about words.  His tough love for the clean energy crowd addresses their habits of speech:  DO NOT SAY “go green,” he says — “It is poisonous to your objectives” — conjuring hippies and wrinkling the noses of half of the population.  DO NOT SAY “save energy” – it implies scrimping.  Psychologists know that people would rather make $20 than save $20.  In some of our best oil country, only 20% of the wells pay out in 7 years – and they talk about making money.  Energy efficiency, on the other hand, shows higher returns than popular securities.  So why are we still talking about saving?  Bruce makes believers when he crosses those oarsman’s arms and talks money:  energy efficiency has “No dry holes, I guarantee it.”

Seattle's 2030 District (Photo Credit: Architecture 2030)

To wrap, Edward Mazria rolled out the roadmap.  The founder of Architecture 2030 closed his practice to take up the challenge of mapping the steps to carbon neutrality in the building sector by 2030.  The goal is to return to safe levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases by zeroing the use of fossil fuels in buildings.  Mazria is not naïve of the gloom and political menace under the “business-as-usual” curve, but he is an architect, and his business is vision.  When I caught up with him after the plenary, I asked him how his goal compares with the sunsetting Kyoto Protocol, which comes in for criticism as unattainable.  The 2030 Challenge is growing in popularity, not shrinking, he says, and names some of the latest recruits.  He can claim 41% of architecture and engineering firms, 7 states, the National Governor’s Association, the US Conference of Mayors, many cities, and section 433 of the Energy Independence and Security Act, signed by President Bush.

The popularity of the 2030 Challenge is that it deals not in problems but in solutions, through discrete and approachable example.  This attainability – this challenge – inspires hope and attracts talent.  Federal leadership is frozen?  Any state, city, town, or firm can pull up to the drawing board.  Architecture 2030 is about to open the toolbox — the 2030 Palette will launch in a global summit in 7 months.  The toolbox is a free shared library of building and planning resources for decarbonization – evolving as it incorporates solutions and lessons learned come from participants worldwide.  We are already beginning to move in the right direction:  emissions are down from Energy Information Administration projections by the equivalent of 700 coal plants and $3.6 trillion.  This progress is not just an artifact of the economy – it has been due to the adoption of building energy codes as recommended by Architecture 2030.  Mazria reminds us that 75% of buildings will likely be new or renovated by 2035, and ripe for upgrades.  Ever since he called out the building sector as the problem  in It’s the Architecture, Stupid!  Mazria and the movement he founded have been the first to say that projections are not fate, and to supply the inspiration for this wave of change.  To lend your hand to the 2030 Palette, create a profile here.

Though diverse in their perspective, Robyn, Oreck and Mazria all provided interesting solutions  to important issues the world is facing.