Ventilation-system design and occupant behavior both significantly impact indoor air quality and consequently the health of occupants in affordable multi-family housing, that is increasingly being sited adjacent to highways and busy roadways in cities.

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.

Multifamily Passive House new construction can be built today for low incremental cost and dramatic energy reduction. Join us for a review of eight affordable passive house projects, demonstrating that Passive House buildings in the Northeast are regularly achieving 60% to 80% lower energy use per square foot than code-built. Learn what has been hardest, what has been surprisingly easy, and what teams would do differently next time from two affordable Passive House projects built in Massachusetts: SquirrelWood in Cambridge and Harbor Village in Gloucester.

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.

Affordable housing is key to bringing equity to disadvantaged communities. In Boston, the Department of Neighborhood Development (DND) design guidelines are pushing affordable housing with strict requirements that are equal to Passive House performance standards.

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.

While more residential customers have turned to heat pumps as an efficient alternative to electric resistance heating, to shift away from delivered fuels, or to add cooling to their home, the modest gains in heat pump penetration have largely been limited to single family homes. This session presents the findings of a barrier study for heat pump adoption in multifamily properties, which have not experienced similar growth in heat pump adoption.

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.