Even the most successful Retro-Commissioning projects encounter some level of conflict. Fostering a culture of collaboration, trust, and engagement with the building’s operating staff can help overcome these challenges and prove to be valuable to the entire project team. Using project examples, this session provides guidance on how to engage the operations team, drive innovative training, and elevate workforce development for a successful, sustainable Retro-Cx program.

In recent years both Boston and New York City have officially declared racism to be a public health crisis. In this moderated panel discussion, you'll hear from a group of diverse speakers that represent various aspects of the building industry. Through the lens of building science, consulting, outdoor spaces, healthy materials, policy, and medical backgrounds, we will explore and unpack how race, geography, and economics intersect in the area of healthy housing.

Buildings and deforestation together produce 50% of global carbon emissions. This session will address how climate-smart forestry and sustainable agriculture can store carbon in ecological landscapes and generate wood and plant-based building materials that reduce embodied carbon in buildings. Key topics include a proposed strategy to double carbon sequestration by global forests, and an assessment of the validity of biogenic carbon claims with an expanded Life Cycle Analysis.

Most of our existing buildings are already constructed with fossil fuels as the heat source. In this session, BEC will demonstrate the successes of retrofitting high performance electrification, through real projects in various phases from design to completion. Following that, we will focus on multifamily design considerations for all-electric hot water systems, including central air to water heat pump options, central VRF hot water plants, and distributed heat pump water heaters.

We learn much of what we know about how buildings really perform from doing measurements and monitoring. This session presents five case studies in which targeted data monitoring led to understanding and resolutions of apparently vexing issues.

How can the residents of “Energy Town, USA” meet their carbon emissions reduction goal in a way that lifts up their entire community? Working interactively and collaboratively in small breakout groups, participants in this workshop will develop innovative solutions to this challenge.

As facilitators, NEEP staff will guide each group with best practices and deep knowledge from their own work in various communities across the Northeast. Context points from real towns will be shared regarding building stock, homebuyer markets, economic parameters, and more.

Building Energy Performance Standards are being introduced throughout the Northeast, including Boston’s BERDO 2.0. Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE), already adopted by several states, can act as a ‘carrot’ for property owners to make the necessary capital improvements to meet these requirements. With C-PACE, property owners can access low-cost, long-term, fixed-rate financing for measures that impact the energy and water performance of their commercial or multi-family properties.

Windows and glazing play a disproportionate role in a building's performance compared to other parts of the assembly.  As we strive to meet our 2030 and 2050 climate goals the design strategies for both our new and existing buildings must be closely evaluated.

Sustainability in lighting is usually linked to energy use only, but it is time to face the real challenges of quantifying the impact of design decisions made throughout the product life cycle. While we may not have complete information on life cycle impacts, we cannot afford to wait until comprehensive information is available to inform our specification decisions. This presentation will provide a framework for weighing operational energy use, embodied carbon, and material impacts.

Current ventilation standards are based on odor instead of health. One cannot smell healthy air. Ventilation standards disfavor air quality in smaller residences and multi-family dwellings while excessively ventilating larger homes. Ventilation impacts our health, cognition, sleep, and disease transmission. This session provides background on today's ventilation standards and recommendations for creating healthy indoor environments. The Covid Safe Space IAQ calculator for reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in buildings is introduced.