Solid mass masonry buildings are a significant fraction of the existing building stock, and many contribute to the historic fabric of neighborhoods. However, with wall R-values of R-3 to R-5, they do not meet modern standards for energy efficiency and comfort.  Insulating these buildings successfully—without causing long-term damage—is a vital part of the ‘toolkit’ for meeting energy and climate goals.

The Design for Freedom Initiative is raising awareness about the pervasiveness of forced and child labor in the construction supply chain. The materials that go into our buildings are heavily reliant on slave labor.  We’ll explore the risks and highlight ways you can shape your practice to address this pressing humanitarian issue as part of your social equity goals.  Learn about the tools and resources available to use in advocacy, internal operations, client conversations, and pilot projects.

What lessons can you learn from completed new construction passive and net zero affordable projects? How can we bring costs down with further experience and tools? Learn from a design build firm experienced in passive and net zero affordable projects.  Hear best practices, what works, and what hasn’t been working. Hear about typical bottlenecks in delivery of affordable high performance housing and how open-source tools can bring down cost, design and analysis barriers.  Learn what incremental costs have been seen on eight Passive House multifamily affordable projects in Massachusetts.

What would it take for us in the green building movement to get the owners and builders who are still building to code minimums to join us? This interactive discussion will focus on incentives, the true overall cost add to make a building more climate conscious, and avenues that can help reach those who are not “in”. Our panel will include a developer who is undoubtedly “in” as well as a mechanical designer who often works with those who are not. We often preach to the choir; this panel will challenge you to think about how we get the rest of the market.

With so many ways to retrofit a building, how can owners identify the right scope of work? What about the right timing? Even the most well-intentioned building owner may leave carbon savings on the table, choose the wrong ECM or retrofit solution, or spend more than they should on a retrofit. Despite the urgency today to electrify and decarbonize as quickly as possible, we can and should stop, think, and plan to optimize retrofits and maximize savings, while investing in health, workforce, and equity.

Take a deep dive into what three projects in the Northeast have done to minimize embodied carbon. The example projects have each taken different approaches: one project focused on concrete in an ICF building, one focused on envelope choices and how to meet Passive House requirements while reducing embodied carbon, and one used Life Cycle Assessment to decide between renovation and new construction for existing school buildings.

Over the past two years, Massachusetts and its consultant team has studied cost-effective commercial building approaches aligned with climate goals. This session will present a building-level review of the analysis done to inform Massachusetts’s upcoming stretch energy code and municipal opt-in stretch code. We will focus on a) Thermal Energy Demand Intensity (TEDI), b) critical role of envelope, thermal bridges, and air infiltrations, c) implications to carbon emission and fossil fuel use, and d) cost optimization for different commercial building types.

The electric grid is changing rapidly - with more intermittent, renewable energy resources contributing to the power generation supply, more dispatchable baseload retiring, and more extreme weather events causing outages. Providing uninterruptible power supply is becoming increasingly more challenging. As building designers and operators, we have the opportunity to be part of the solution by optimizing the demand side of the equation. Passive building is a design methodology that utilizes passive principles to reduce loads on a peak and annual basis.

The City of Boston is on the cutting edge of emissions performance standards for existing buildings. Staff from the City’s Environment Department will present on Boston’s new Building Emissions Reduction Ordinance (BERDO 2.0). The purpose of this session will be to engage building and energy professionals on pathways that help owners comply with the new standard. The speakers will present on the requirements of the ordinance, compliance mechanisms, the ongoing regulations development process, and resources to assist owners in complying.

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.