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.

Bowdoin College is currently constructing a pair of connected campus buildings, both with mass timber structures. Located in the Pine Tree State, the project is ironically using timber sourced overseas.

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.

We will present the IAQ monitoring program at the Finch Cambridge passive house development, first year results, and lessons learned at Finch and in attempting an IAQ monitoring program at another site.  IAQ monitoring in all common spaces and some apartments includes CO2 and radon, and in all apartments and common spaces total VOCs, temperature and humidity.  We will share the first 18 months of IAQ data for Finch and findings relative to temperature, CO2, humidity, and total VOCs.

Transform your practice by taking responsibility for the carbon footprint of your work. This session reviews existing tools and frameworks, from planning scale to site and garden design, integrating metrics from both architecture and landscape design, including Sasaki's new Carbon Conscience: Embodied Carbon Planning Tool incorporating both architecture and landscape at the site planning level. Panelists will share their findings from translating primary research into accessible tools and best practices, with examples from planning, architecture and landscape projects.

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.

While project teams typically establish quantifiable performance targets for their projects, there is no magic bullet for defining the right energy consumption goal for each project. This panel of high-performance experts and architects will discuss strategies for quantitative goal setting: when, who, and how aggressive.

To achieve our 2050 climate goals we must go all-electric. But how do we get there? For new construction, all-electric solutions are increasingly viable. However, all-electric solutions for existing buildings are considerably more challenging. The upfront cost to upgrade old buildings to a level that ensures efficient (and economical) performance can be prohibitive.