This session will discuss the advantages and challenges of using CO2 Heat Pumps for decarbonizing and efficiently electrifying commercial Domestic Hot Water systems. The session will outline and discuss the Mitsubishi Electric Heat2O DHW solution along with other CO2 DHW systems and their applications. The functionality, operation, scalability, and relevant design challenges related to these types of solutions will be explained. This session will discuss the use and benefit of CO2 as a refrigerant and its impact on environmentally sustainable buildings.

To achieve mass adoption of offsite construction, the building process as we know it has to be reevaluated from multiple perspectives. This is especially true when combined with the goals of scaling up low-carbon and high-performance objectives. The session will explore how the three primarily residential companies have built their businesses around offsite manufacturing principles and have developed strategies to “unsilo” the industry.

The impact of building materials on human and environmental health has received increased attention, and hundreds of design firms have pledged to support healthier materials. Ensuring healthier material selections requires complex decisions and collaborations. Acknowledging this challenge, how can the industry adopt meaningful material health goals across all projects? How can we build on the work others are doing?

As the energy and carbon landscape evolves, the design and construction of hospitals must change to meet new challenges. New techniques, perspectives and methodologies must be applied to drive innovation and achieve outstanding results. From the dual perspective of a CPHC and experienced HVAC design engineer, we will provide an overview of Passive House principles in the context of hospital design and construction. We will review three case studies: one occupied, one in construction, and one in design.

With the coming updates to building energy codes, there is an anticipation of growth in the volume of Passive House buildings. It is important to have a fully scalable approach to successfully guide teams from scope development through certification. This session will give a “behind the scenes” look into the process and demonstrate how to best handle the expansion of Passive House projects with a look at the perspective of the project manager, the energy modeler and the PHIUS verifier.

Methods for electrification of DHW in multifamily buildings all pose challenges. This session will provide an overview of existing technologies and a brief history of how we arrived at central air-source heat pump technology as the least problematic solution today. We will use recent design-phase case studies to illustrate cost, estimated energy use, mechanical space requirements, system and equipment peculiarities, metering strategies, maintenance requirements, what we’d like to learn from systems as they’re installed, and why the alternatives for electrification of DHW are even worse!

Passive House buildings go hand-in-hand with on-site generation and electrification, but what happens when you have code-required emergency power backup? The Kenzi tackled the wicked problem of designing, pricing, and permitting the first all-electric building above four floors in the City of Boston. We will dive into the nitty gritty of design, funding, and procurement, reveal our strategy for Boston Fire Department concerns, and discuss what code language we leaned on to pull it all together.

Retrofitting buildings to reduce operating emissions is a key climate strategy. Viable, affordable, and scalable strategies must be implemented. However, we must avoid a surge of embodied carbon emissions from the manufacturing of building materials. This presentation showcases research and case studies evaluating the embodied carbon investment of varying retrofit assembly strategies and construction methodologies in cold climates with the expected operational carbon savings. We will hold an introductory how-to workshop on low embodied carbon approaches that exist today.

This session offers a case study of a curtainwall building in which the project team collaborated on an iterative energy modeling and design process to achieve aggressive energy reduction goals. Our panel will share insight on the process that led to significant energy and carbon reductions, predictive versus post occupancy usage data, and how this building will adapt to BERDO 2.0 and future energy and resilience considerations – a challenge facing recently constructed buildings that will need to decarbonize in the near future in Boston.