Energy modeling Q&A: first some answers on cost, and then it's your turn to ask (or answer) some questions.

There is so much confusion about energy modeling--what it should cost, what benefits it offers, how to approach it--that clear statements addressing these questions are like a breath of fresh air.

When I was privy to a private email exchange that included a short treatise on this topic from Chris Schaffner, principal of The Green Engineer in Concord, Massachusetts, I got his permission to share it.

First, the question:

I've often heard that energy modeling generally becomes cost-effective on projects that exceed 50,000 square feet. Do you agree, or is there a better threshold?

And Chris's reply:

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Going to BuildingEnergy this year? There are a lot of exciting sessions to choose from.

Interdisciplinary, cutting-edge, and combining high-flown philosophical ideas with practical nuts-and-bolts advice, the BuildingEnergy Conference in Boston is not only close to home but also close to our hearts. Every year, we look forward to meeting with old friends and hearing a lot of new ideas. This year, the conference is slated for March 6 & 7, and we'll be presenting some new ideas of our own.

If you're going, don't forget to stop by our booth--#656--and say hi!

Building Resilience for Climate Risks

BuildingGreen founder and executive editor Alex Wilson will be giving a talk on resilience at 2 p.m. Wednesday, March 7. As in his blog series on the topic and in an upcoming feature article, Alex will address a lot of interrelated issues in this session, including synergies between sustainable design and resilient design as well as the urgency of changing the way we build now. The session also looks beyond buildings to discuss land-use planning and local food systems. It's a hot, emerging topic, and we hope you'll be able to attend to hear the latest on this important issue.

Making Existing Windows Work Better

At 4 p.m. that same day, Peter Yost, our director of residential programs, will be sharing the latest results from research BuildingGreen is participating in with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Peter will take an objective, evidence-based look at which window attachments (a.k.a. window treatments) are proven to offer the highest energy performance in the lab and in the field. This research can help you help clients make informed decisions about existing windows. Making windows work better doesn't have to be expensive and doesn't have to mean replacement.

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USGBC's Center for Green Schools lauds ten groups for taking the lead on green building education.

My first lesson in how insulation works came during high school physics class--but not as part of an experiment.

Our physics lab was in the chilly basement, and the "lesson" consisted of Sister Bernie explaining to a shivering classmate that we should all come to physics class with extra layers because "dead air is the best insulator."

It was the old admonition to put on a sweater packaged as an explanation of why putting on a sweater actually works: the air trapped between two layers of clothing is what really keeps you warm--not so much the cloth itself.

Green building across the curriculum

For so many reasons, school is a great place to learn about green building. This is true even if you go to school in a rather dark 1930s-era masonry building, but more and more school districts are renovating and building for high performance, increasing opportunities for great conversations on the topic.

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Choosing light bulbs can be a baffling ordeal. An award-winning app uses EPA data to make it simple again.

How many apps does it take to change a light bulb?

Apps can't actually do that yet: you still have to climb on a chair and balance precariously while holding a handful of glass. However, the winner of best overall app in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Apps for the Environment Challenge can help you choose the best and most efficient replacement option for incandescent bulbs.

In addition to selecting the bulb, Eco-Hatchery's app, called Light Bulb Finder, calculates projected energy savings and carbon dioxide emission reductions as well as cost savings and payback time based on local electrical rates. It also allows users to buy the bulbs online or email a shopping list--and it even includes discounts from local utility and government programs.

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Letting short-term payback analyses drive economic decisions about high-performance buildings is crazy.

If we let simple or even net-value payback analysis alone drive the economics of high-performance buildings, we might as well throw in the towel. It is truly crazy to apply just this approach to long-lived durable goods, such as homes. Yes, it is critical that the lower operational costs are factored into a home's value. But homes deliver their value over time to a series of owners. The initial owner or renovator needs to know that all those involved in the financial process will recognize their investment in high performance. And they need to be certain it will fully transfer when they eventually sell their green home.

There are three key housing industry sectors that need to step up to the plate to support our green building industry: realtors, appraisers, and lenders.

Green realtors

Realtors have more contact time with homebuyers than any of us. They build a relationship with their clients, and while they do not have to be knowledgeable about green or high-performance attributes of homes, it's a huge leg up if they are.

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DesignIntelligence has released its annual report on the top architecture schools, and 80% are campus-wide BuildingGreen subscribers.

We're always curious to see the DesignIntelligence lists of top architecture and design programs in the U.S. While the methodology is imperfect--pretty much ignoring all the amazing smaller architecture programs out there--these lists do give us a snapshot of which big-name programs are doing a good job of preparing their architecture and design students for the "real world."

Architecture and design are practical professions, so being prepared for professional life has always been essential. In the depths of a grueling recession, though, these rankings have even more weight: for a recent graduate, being ready to design real buildings on day one could easily make the difference between employment and unemployment.

How students become professionals

We've said it before: green building is just about the only kind of building happening right now. In an abysmal job market, design program grads ought to be able to say they are up to date on holistic sustainable design principles and best practices.

So we were proud to see that 80% of the programs listed by DesignIntelligence are campus-wide subscribers to BuildingGreen. Five of the six programs listed as strongest in sustainable design practices are also campus-wide subscribers (the sixth, Auburn University, subscribes to the print version of EBN).

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Building to the Passive House standard is hard enough for the pros. We get a peek into what happens when you try to go it alone.

The last BuildingGreen field trip we wrote about was at the Syracuse Center of Excellence. This week, we stayed a bit closer to home by heading to a Passive House that's currently under construction in our own backyard.

We've written often on Passive House (subscriber link), and it was great to see the zip-taped skin and 24-inch I-beam bones of one this week. Andrea and Ted call their new Brattleboro home an "Almost Passive House" since they're utilizing Passivhaus design ideas but are not yet sure whether it will meet the standard or if they're going to try for certification.

Windows require tradeoffs

Eli Gould, of Ironwood Brand, whom Andrea and Ted brought on board to help with the design and framing, showed us around and had some great insights into their particular design process adding to the success of the project. One of the things he highlighted was the use of a window "budget" that was focused not on money but on heat loads.

The team has been analyzing the building from the start and tweaking the window-to-wall ratio along the way. Designing to an energy budget as opposed to a financial one is helping them meet their stringent goals--although Andrea readily admits that finances too play a role.

For instance, they chose a uPVC window sash, which doesn't contain plasticizers or phthalates, despite their reservations about PVC because it was half the price of those made of wood or aluminum.

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By leveraging social media, a national campus competition helps students turn small commitments into large-scale change.

Back when I was in college, I learned lots of fascinating but impractical things. The difference between phrenology and phenomenology. The anatomy of a flatworm. Three compelling examples of why Victor Frankenstein was the true monster in the novel named after him.

I couldn't have told you what a plug load was, though, let alone why it was important.

Campus Conservation Nationals

I probably wasn't alone in that. But thanks to the Campus Conservation Nationals, many more of today's college students will know a lot about plug loads and why they are important. This large-scale national contest attempts to motivate students to save energy and water by making it into an intercollegiate sporting event, with Facebook as the playing field.

As Pat Lane, USGBC Students lead at the Center for Green Schools, puts it in a recent blog post:

Dorms will be pitted against dorms, schools against schools and conferences against conferences in a combined effort to reduce energy consumption amongst college residential buildings across the country. Students will mobilize door-to-door and through social media, encouraging peers to make commitments for three weeks that will put their school at the forefront of the sustainability conversation.

There's also an ambitious overall energy goal to save a full gigawatt-hour during the eleven-week contest period.

From individual to collective action

The thing that's really cool about this competition is that it focuses on small individual commitments--simple things like taking five-minute showers--and yet finds a way to represent these tiny individual actions as a massive collective action.

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What do over a thousand protests around the world last weekend in support of Occupy Wall Street have to do with Green Building?

When NYC Mayor Bloomberg was speaking via video-link at Greenbuild, and while the Toronto Airport security strike delayed green building practitioners from returning home, a growing group of "occupiers" continued a now one month old occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York City. There are many attempts to explain what's going on there, but the best I've seen comes in the words of those on the ground–-this is no simple single-issue movement to be cordoned off as a faction. Nor is it a "left" or "right" movement; the call has appeal to original tea party members, greens, labor, and so many others who count themselves among "the 99%."

I won't attempt to create my own container to box-in what's happening there. I was there Sunday, and it's very clear to me that attempting to do so would do a disservice to the passion, creativity, community, diversity, and collective seeking found in Zuccotti Park. But I came away mulling over the links to what the green building community is trying to accomplish.

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We waste almost as much food in the U.S. every day as we should be eating--about 1,400 calories per person. Wasting less is best, but if we really can't eat it, where should we put it?

I will never forget the day my sixth-grade teacher started crying in front of the whole class. The tears capped off a long, loud, after-lunch rant about wasted food and the starving children in Ethiopia who would have been happy to eat it.

Like most of my peers, I responded with both shame and defiance. Who wants to make her teacher cry, let alone singlehandedly starve a bunch of little kids? On the other hand, people threw out that food for a reason: it was only nominally edible. On the rare occasions when I bought school lunch, I privately believed that even a starving child wouldn't choke down more than a few bites before dumping the rest in the garbage.

That said, I have always been horrified by the very thought of throwing food away. I was raised to clean my plate regardless of whether I liked what was on it or not. Why? This was the era of super-cheap generic canned goods with white labels and bold black lettering, so we didn't lack adequate calories. And you couldn't really send your leftovers to Ethiopia. Wasting food was just categorically, viscerally wrong; you didn't need a why.

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