The report looked at six very different building types in four climatically diverse cities across the U.S. including Portland, Phoenix, Chicago and Atlanta. The study also considered the role that geography, energy performance, electricity-grid mix, building type and building lifespan have on the overall environmental picture.

Major findings from the report include:

• Reuse Matters. Building reuse typically offers greater environmental savings than demolition and new construction. It can take between 10 to 80 years for a new energy efficient building to overcome, through efficient operations, the climate change impacts created by its construction. The majority of building types in different climates will take between 20-30 years to compensate for the initial carbon impacts from construction.

• Scale Matters. Building reuse and retrofits substantially reduce climate change impacts. For instance, retrofitting, rather than demolishing and replacing, just 1 percent of the city of Portland’s office buildings and single family homes over the next ten years would help to meet 15 percent of the county’s total CO2 reduction targets over the next decade.
• Design Matters. The environmental benefits of reuse are maximized by minimizing the input of new construction materials. Renovation projects that require a significant amount of new materials can reduce or even negate the benefits of reuse.

Produced by Preservation Green Lab, a sustainable building research think tank and advocacy arm of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, an LCA study is an internationally recognized approach to evaluating the potential environmental and human health impacts associated with products and services throughout their respective life cycles. Major funding for this study was provided by The Summit Foundation. Study partners included Cascadia Green Building Council, Quantis LLC, Skanska, and Green Building Services.

The full report may be downloaded at www.preservationnation.org/sustainability.

• Lincoln Hall Renovation, Portland State University – Boora Architects
• Clif Bar & Co. Headquarters – Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Archtiects LLP
• Port of Portland Headquarters – Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects LLP

This is the second year that the unique awards, jointly developed by Architecture 2030 and AIA Portland COTE, recognized design excellence among projects striving to achieve the reduction targets of the 2030 Challenge. These winners were selected from among candidate projects for the AIA Portland 2011 Design Awards, which documented compliance with the 2010 Architecture 2030 threshold of 60 percent less energy use than a typical building of the same size and type. All candidate projects for the Portland AIA Design Awards were required to calculate and submit both project reductions in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from operations, compared to a baseline building. Joshua Hatch, a Brightworks Sustainability Advisor, and Chair of the Portland COTE Building Climate Impact Committee, explained the gestation of the awards.

“The AIA Portland Design Awards have a long history and an award for sustainability has been presented for many years. Four years ago, when Ed Mazria was in town to present the 2030 Challenge, AIA Portland committed substantial organizational support. In collaboration with BetterBricks, the chapter offers diverse educational workshops and classes about the 2030 Challenge, measurement and verification, and energy modeling; and is the first chapter, nationally, to integrate the 2030 Challenge into our design awards. Four years ago, as part of the Design Awards process, the AIA asked projects to voluntarily submit calculations of energy savings and emissions reductions associated with each project. Three years ago these submissions became mandatory.

“We initially thought that within five years we might be able to have all projects competing for a Design Award in compliance with 2030 Challenge goals. We were overly optimistic. While we have great projects every year, with many achieving 2030 targets, some even achieving net zero energy goals, setting 2030 targets as a required threshold for the Design Awards has not been possible. So we have collaborated with Architecture 2030 to establish a separate award, which so far  is unique in the nation.”

All projects competing for AIA Portland Design Awards that demonstrate compliance with the 2030 Challenge energy targets are automatically eligible for a 2030 Challenge Design Award. According to Josh Hatch:

“The COTE Building Climate Impact Committee’s principal focus is the Design Awards. We developed and maintain the Building Climate Impact calculator that must be completed by all Award applicants, to document energy performance and emissions reductions, review submittals, coordinate the relationship with Architecture 2030 and BetterBricks, answer questions from local firms, assist with jury selection and help orient the jurors to the performance of projects in the competition

“This year we had a 95 percent participation rate in completing the required 2030 Challenge benchmarking calculations. [BB note: a modest number of projects were exempt from this requirement because they were unconditioned spaces, or for other reasons.] This year the submittals and calculations were more thorough, customized, and thoughtful than prior years–continuing a trend of increased building performance competency.”

“The average project reduction was 42 percent, for a grand total of 51,700 tons of CO2. There were many high performance projects, including some that were over 70, 80, or 90% reductions, including a net zero energy project. 51,700 tons of carbon is equivalent to taking 9,100 cars off the road or eliminating the emissions from 4,300 average Portland residents.”

While the 2030 jurors were clearly interested in energy performance and carbon reduction, they also looked for interesting challenges and how the teams developed energy efficient solutions. The awards are meant to recognize exceptional innovation, since all projects submitted to Architecture 2030 met the 2030 Challenge threshold reduction.

First Prize was awarded to the renovation of Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall, designed by Boora Architects. The 136,000 square foot project, with a predicted Energy Use Index (EUI) of 43 kBTU/sf-year, achieved energy savings of 63 percent when compared to an average US building of the same type and size.

Second Prize was awarded to Zimmer Gunsul Frasca for the Clif Bar & Co, headquarters, a 75,000 square foot retrofit of a former manufacturing facility. This project had a predicted EUI of 46.3 kBTU/sf-year, representing a 71 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from the average, equivalent building.

 
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca was also recognized with an Honorable Mention for the Port of Portland Headquarters. The office space in this 206,000 square foot project was predicted to use only 44 kBTU/sf-year, a 67 percent reduction in energy use over an average U.S. building of the same size and type.

 
The 2030 Challenge Design Awards are much more than a feel-good event, lessons learned by the firms striving to achieve the 2030 Challenge targets need to be widely disseminated. As Hatch points out, the carbon savings recognized by this small group of projects, while significant, are “only equivalent to 0.6% of the total City of Portland’s emissions or about one percent of the emissions from the Boardman plant.” In looking forward to the next few years of work promoting the 2030 Challenge, Hatch hopes that the collaborative efforts of Architecture 2030, AIA Portland, and AIA Portland COTE and BetterBricks will accomplish the following:

• “Have teams consider energy and emissions earlier in the process. The more feedback that designers can give themselves over the course of design, the better.”

• “There are more and more tools available to help designers, but energy models were developed for only 50 percent of candidate projects, roughly the same that the national AIA found from reporting firms for the AIA 2030 Committment. More firms need to take advantage of these resources,

• “A greater percentage of this year’s projects are built projects, but there has been no increase in the number of projects that submitted actual data. Designers need to talk with clients about the performance of their buildings and to maintain a more active role after building hand over, to understand performance.

• “Increase the percent of projects that meet the 2030 targets. There was a drop of compliant projects this year, as the 2030 Challenge threshold was raised. We all need to remain diligent.

Once the building is occupied and performance is tracked, you might feel more like Sisyphus than Atlas. Although you strained and sweated to push the energy performance rock to the top of the hill, your efforts can be easily undone by operating decisions and occupant behavior. And who gets blamed if performance is not as predicted? It’s been hard to find good research investigating the relative impact of design, operations, and tenant behavior on building performance, but a July 2011 New Buildings Institute White Paper goes a long way to help.

Sensitivity Analysis: Comparing the Impact of Design, Operation, and Tenant Behavior of Building Energy Performance, by Jonathan Heller and Morgan Heater of Ecotope and Mark Frankel of New Buildings Institute, compares the relative magnitude of modifications to design, operation and tenant behavior characteristics on the total building energy use of a mid-size office building. Twenty-eight distinct physical and operational building characteristics that affect total building energy use were identified for study purposes, each with a range of performance values representing poor, baseline and good practice with respect to building energy performance. To represent interactive effects (i.e. impacts from interactions between systems such as cooling and lighting), good and poor practice packages of measures were also analyzed. Weather data from 16 different cities represented the range of U.S. climate types.

The authors identify the general perception that “the responsibility for building energy performance is in the hands of architects and engineers and is relatively set once the building is constructed.” They explain why this research should serve an important function and overturn that assumption.

“This perception represents a significant barrier to broad societal goals to substantially improve building energy performance and reflects an extremely inaccurate perception of how buildings work. In fact, a significant percentage of building energy use is driven directly by operational and occupant habits that are completely independent of building design, and in many cases these post-design characteristics can have a larger impact on total energy use than many common variations in the design of the building itself.”

The study deserves a broad, diverse set of readers. As the authors suggest, the implications of their work extend far beyond the interests of the design community:

“While the results of this study are informative to the design community in prioritizing energy strategies for buildings, they have even more significant implications on how buildings are operated and occupied and on how design teams should communicate information about building performance to building owners, operators and occupants. The results of this study can provide a broader perspective on how buildings use energy and on what aspects of building energy performance deserve more attention in design, operation and policy strategies.”

The white paper discusses some of the more significant implications related to energy modeling, energy codes, operation and occupancy assumptions and decision making, and climate responsive design strategies. Extremely useful graphics of the relative impacts will help spread these messages. Download the document here.

Read more about this new rating system at the BetterBricks website.

Designed to be the most energy efficient commercial building in the world – at least for the moment – the Bullitt Foundation’s Cascadia Center will achieve this objective through integrated architectural and engineering design, cutting-edge technology and components, carefully selected building materials and conscious choices by tenants.

In 2007, Congress created a Zero Net Energy Commercial Buildings Initiative, with a market transition goal of Zero Net Energy for new commercial buildings by 2030. The Cascadia Center will demonstrate how to achieve that level of performance in 2012.

Given the prominence of the project and its ambitious goals, there has been a lot of interest in the energy performance. To answer questions, Denis Hayes (Bullitt Foundation), Jim Hanford (Miller Hull Partnership) and Paul Schwer (PAE Consulting Engineers) developed an energy performance analysis based on the models used in developing the project. Some key findings:

• The EUI is 16 kBtu / sq. ft based on Gross Floor Area and 21 kBtu / sq. ft. based on Treated Floor Area—a remarkable achievement for a project of this size and budget.
• At 52,000 sq. ft., there are no comparable buildings in the US Department of Energy’s “Zero Energy Building” database. The only commercial building currently in the database is a 6,500 sq. ft. lighting consultancy outside San Jose, CA.
• Lighting loads represent 23% of energy usage and have been limited to 0.4 Watts per square foot (vs. 0.9 Watts / sq. ft allowed under Seattle code)

Of course models can vary from reality, which is why the Cascadia Center team will be measuring actual performance once the building is commissioned. But until then, this analysis offers a detailed look at the information and thinking driving decision making.

Download the analysis here.

Readers will learn about the energy modeling implications of geographic and climate data; building site characteristics; building zoning, thermal blocks and space uses; schedules, and building descriptors, including building envelope, primary and secondary HVAC systems; miscellaneous energy uses; and on-site power generation.

Furthermore, general familiarity with the methodology will be useful because the COMNET energy efficiency calculation process: establishes eligibility for federal tax deductions per section 179D of the IRS code; can be used to calculate percent savings for green building rating system points; and is used to estimate annual energy use during design, for energy labels. The modeling rules and procedures in the manual are consistent with the widely used Performance Rating Method (PRM) of Appendix G of ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2007.

Learn more and download a copy from http://www.comnet.org/

ZGF reported that they have now benchmarked all their projects worked on by the Seattle office and were advancing with other offices. Just the fact of reporting (mostly modeled performance at this point) has had an impact on the firm’s interest in improving performance.

NBBJ has been working on reviewing and revising their practice since 2006. Part of that process has been the use of the IDL Puget Sound to help in research and tracking. In early 2008 they signed on to the 2030 Challenge of Architecture 2030 and in early 2009 they signed on the the AIA’ 2030 Firm Commitment.  Part of that commitment requires reportiong on project performance in terms of energy and carbon emissions.

Chris Jordan, a Seattle-based artist, delivered a very interesting keynote address on the impacts of mass consumption.  Check out his work here www.chrisjordan.com.

NEEA’s BetterBricks initiative will be exploring the findings from the two Northwest firms in a future article. Stay tuned.

NEEA’s BetterBricks was happy to be a major sponsor this program. This year the focus was on energy performance and water performance. For the first time, all projects were required to provide an energy consumption measure, the energy Use Index or EUI, which seems small but, in fact, is a huge step to getting all entrants to think about energy performance. In addition, the only other mandatory requirement was to describe the project team’s integrated design approach, a key process to achieve high performance buildings.

I’ll get to the award winners in a minute. First I want to share what I find stimulating about the awards process itself. To start, the jury consisted of leading sustainability experts, and not just architects. People like Bob Berkebile FAIA, Founding Principal, BNIM Architects and co-founder of COTE nationally, Don Horn AIA, Assistant Director, GSA Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, Claire Johnson, Associate Director, Atelier Ten, San Francisco, and ALEX STEFFEN, Executive Editor, Worldchanging.  The jury was moderated by Nadav Malin, President, BuildingGreen, Executive Editor, GreenSource.

The Awards process began with the submittals but led to a public jury panel discussion that was videotaped for later posting on the AIA website, followed by a public jury interview of the finalist teams. Then the 11 finalist projects were printed on panels for public display and eventual shipment for display around the region, further extending the impact of the lessons generated by these projects. The Awards ceremony allowed a public discussion with the winning project teams and in the near future there will be a set of case studies and a small booklet and an issue of Seattle AIA Forum magazine describing the projects. So if you missed the other public opportunities you still have many options for viewing the projects. Web images and descriptions of these and all submitted projects can be found at http://wmig.aiaseattle.org/2010_gallery.

Finalists and Winners

Now for what you’ve been waiting for. The jury selected two Gold-level projects, one Silver, and two Honorable Mentions — one for Rural Housing and one for Cultural Sensitivity.

GOLD
King Street Station Rehabilitation, Seattle WA
ZGF Architects
Collaborators:  SMEP Engineer: ARUP; LEED Certification: Green Building Services, Inc.; Commissioning Agent: Keithly Barber Associates

Photo Credit: Seattle Department of Transportation; Museum of   History & Industry
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GOLD
Vancouver Convention Centre West, Vancouver Canada
Design Architect: LMN Architects. (Prime Architects: Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership & DA Architects & Planners)
Collaborators: Mechanical Engineer: Stantec Consulting; Commissioning Authority and Mechanical Commissioning Agent: KD Engineering Co.

Photo Credit:  LMN/Studio 216
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SILVER
Twelve | West
ZGF Architects
Collborators:  Gerding Edlen Development Company LLC ; Total Mechanical – M/E/P Engineers, Lighting Design

Photo Credit:  Timothy Hursley,  ZGF Architects LLP
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Honorable Mention for Rural Affordable Housing
Common Ground, A Co-op Neighborhood
Mithun
Collaborators: Lopez Community Land Trust.

Photo Credit:  Mithun, Juan Hernandez
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Honorable Mention for Cultural Sustainability
Northwest Maritime Center
The Miller|Hull Partnership
Collaborators:  Mechanical Engineering: Ecotope, Inc; Sustainability: O’Brien and Company

Photo Credit:  Nic Lehoux
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During the awards ceremony, there was an open Q&A session with project team members and the audience. Below are some of the interesting ideas from NEEA’s BetterBricks’ point of view:

- Integrated design proved to be a key process to attain high performance.

- Thermal comfort expectations can and should vary by seasons, by use and by zone.

- Green BIM tool advances are really helping.

- District-level awareness and connections are key to advanced sustainability.

- It is important to explore all the energy options early and seeing where they might work or even influence the design scheme.

- Some new products were developed or introduced into the US via some of the projects thus making it easier for future projects to take advantage of.

- It was essential to either have a client that was interested and even aggressively pushing the energy and sustainability goals or have the architect effectively convince the client of the importance.
So go check out the detailed project information at the Seattle AIA website, and look for the video trailer http://wmig.aiaseattle.org/2010_gallery.