Building Technology

The FAS Building Technologies program has just released a policy analysis titled “Implementing Energy Efficiency in Building Codes Based on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009″, written by FAS intern Amit Talapatra.  Link to the full PDF of the paper here.  

The purpose of this analysis is to provide better understanding of the implications of Section 201 of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, also known as the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill. This analysis examines specific provisions of the bill and investigates ways for the Department of Energy and private code-development organizations to implement these policies using existing tools and methods available to them. The topics covered here include: ways to meet new energy efficiency targets, methods for defining cost-effectiveness, procedures to assure state compliance and issues that may arise if private organizations do not meet the requirements of the bill. For each of these topics, this analysis focuses on the relevant language in the bill, determines what questions stakeholders are interested in and answers these by taking both technical and policy factors into consideration.

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On Tuesday, President Obama signed the $787 Billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. The act is estimated to save three and a half million jobs over the next two years.

We’ve kept an eye on it through its development, and I want to give an update as to what made it out the other side and into law. My comments on building related portions are below. A more inclusive evaluation of the stimulus’s green measures by the Alliance to Save Energy can be found here and here.

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Looking at the numbers pulled out from yesterday’s post, there are a few things I want to note.

First of all, the amount of money being put into building retrofits is pretty astounding. Just under 35 billion is included in the house stimulus package that is strictly for retrofitting and renovating buildings. This isn’t all solely for energy-efficiency measures, but much of it is. This includes money to the DOE Weatherization Assistance Program, money for the US General Services Administration to improve energy efficiency of federal buildings, grants to improve the energy efficiency of HUD subsidized housing for the elderly, disabled, and for Section 8, and for improving schools and institutions of higher education.

All of this is really exciting, but it also creates an astounding puzzle: how to ramp up these programs to such enormous levels quickly and effectively. For example, the Weatherization Assistance Program was allocated $227.2 Million last year. There is a national framework and a network of state and local agencies already in place, and allowances per building have been doubled, but absorbing roughly 25 times the amount of money will be a dramatic challenge.  A national framework for training and certification, as well as some sort of national database to expedite the process of analyzing and retrofitting buildings to the full cost-effective level. FAS is currently putting together thoughts on this, and I’ll have more on this shortly.

Another important point to note is tucked into the section on State Energy Program grants. The bill allocates $3.4 Billion to state energy programs, but allows money beyond normal allocations to be distributed only to states that have “decoupled” utility profits from sales in their regulation. This allows for utilities to profit from energy efficiency, rather than strictly from producing more energy, and it has been shown to be an important tool in energy reductions. It appears as though this was Rep. Waxman’s doing, and a more in depth account can be found here.

In addition to being tied to decoupling, these state energy program grants are to be given to states where the residential building code is equivalent or better than the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (and for commercial buildings, ASHRAE 90.1-2007). This is also encouraging. There are two halves to improving the national building stock through building codes: improving the codes themselves, and then getting municipalities to adopt them. Hopefully this carrot will help push states towards these improved codes.

Its unclear what of this will emerge in the final version of the stimulus, and I’ll be keeping an eye and adding more thoughts as things happen.

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I’m back from my trip out to Denver for the ASCE AEI Conference, so I’ll be putting up a few posts to catch up on a few things. The first I’d like to update on is the “30 Percent Solution” – an attempt to increase the performance of the model energy code by 30 percent – that I referenced a few posts back.

The final hearings were held in Minneapolis last week, and unfortunately the overall package of energy improvements narrowly failed (receiving over 60% of votes in favor, but not enough to reach the required two thirds majority).

Still, energy efficiency will substantially improve in the nation’s 2009 model energy code governing new home construction, as several individual measures were passed. The 2009 IECC will have several significant new provisions to boost energy efficiency, including:

• Increased insulation in basements, floors and walls;
• Improved window efficiency;
• Reductions in wasted energy from leaky heating & cooling ducts;
• Reductions in tradeoffs that fail to capture energy savings from efficient heating & cooling equipment;
• High-efficiency lighting; and
• Improved air sealing within the building envelope.

While FAS is disappointed the measures were not fully passed, these incremental improvements are encouraging. It is also heartening that over 60 percent of attendees voted in its favor, a clear demonstration of its growing support. We hope (and fully expect) that these efforts will continue, and model energy codes will continue to improve.

More information can be found at the EECC’s website.

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In a few days, the International Code Council’s (ICC) final action hearings of the 2009 code development process will take place in Minneapolis. The hearings are the final step in a 3 year long code development cycle aimed at re-evaluating and improving the ICC’s myriad of building codes.

I bring this up because it’s the final determination for what has been deemed as the “30 percent solution” by the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition (EECC) to be adopted into the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), the nationally recognized model energy efficiency code.  The proposals included in this “30 percent solution” look to improve the energy efficiency of the entire code by 30 percent by using current, everyday products and practices that are affordable (paying dividends through positive cash flow for the homeowner).

This lengthy process began in 2007 with the submission of over 150 proposed amendments, which have been revised to incorporate comments and recommendations throughout the development process. The result is a set of 21 individual proposals – fourteen of which were approved by the Development Committee in Palm Springs, with modifications as appropriate, and seven other proposals which were initially not approved but have now been modified by the EECC in its public comments. One of these, EC-14 is a compilation of all the individual parts and would essentially revise the entire code, and another (EC-154) is a voluntary appendix, designed to provide jurisdictions interested in increasing their energy efficiency  beyond the basic IECC measures with a means to do so.

The product of this “Final Action Hearing” will become the 2009 IECC, which can then be ratified as a new building requirement by municipalities across the country.

FAS is very interested in the outcome of these hearings. Improving building codes is one of the many ways to spur future focus and development on building energy efficiency, and if these measures are passed, they will represent a significant jump in one fell swoop.  FAS will be keeping an eye of these hearings, and will update the blog with developments.

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