Retrofit Playbook for Large Buildings Launch Event
On June 11, 2024, NYSERDA, BE-Ex, RMI, and Urban Land Institute hosted the launch of the Retrofit Playbook for Large Buildings, showcasing replicable approaches for low-carbon retrofits from cohorts of the Empire Building Challenge. Additionally, NYSERDA announced its newest cohort of the Empire Building Challenge (EBC), featuring a number of leading affordable and low-to-medium income housing projects.
Opening Remarks
Michael Reed, Acting Head of Large Buildings, NYSERDA Joe Chavez, Deputy Director, Resilient & Efficient Buildings, NYC MOCEJ
The Role of Design Charrettes in Building Decarbonization Planning
As the world grapples with the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the built environment has become a critical focus area to deliver progress. Buildings are significant contributors to global carbon emissions, and transitioning to more sustainable, low-carbon operations is essential for meeting climate goals. Planning for that transition now, through a thoughtful and rational approach, is key to achieving success over time.
Design charrettes are an important tool project teams can use to support their decarbonization planning work. These collaborative design review workshops bring together diverse stakeholders to develop and refine strategies for reducing carbon emissions from buildings over time.
What is a Design Charrette?
A design charrette is an intensive, multi-disciplinary workshop aimed at finding and refining solutions to complex problems. The term originated in 19th century Paris and refers to the practice of design students working intensely on their projects until the last minute, when a cart or “charrette” would be wheeled around to collect their final designs. The term has evolved to describe collaborative sessions that bring together developers, designers, domain experts, community members, and an array of other stakeholders to reach mutually beneficial outcomes. In the context of building decarbonization, design charrettes facilitate the rapid development of actionable (and at times substantially more innovative) strategies to reduce emissions from buildings, with alignment among multiple interested parties.
Why Use Design Charrettes to Achieve Resource Efficient Decarbonization?
Collaborative Problem-Solving: Building decarbonization requires input from a wide range of experts, including architects, engineers, asset managers, environmental scientists, and community leaders. A design charrette brings these diverse voices together in a collaborative setting, ensuring that all perspectives are considered.
Intensive Focus: The concentrated nature of a charrette allows participants to delve deeply into the problem at hand. Over several hours (or days), stakeholders can explore various scenarios, analyze data, and develop detailed plans that might otherwise take months to create using traditional methods.
Iterative Process: Charrettes are designed to be iterative, with multiple rounds of feedback and refinement as needed. This approach ensures that the final outcomes are well-vetted and robust, with broad support from all stakeholders.
Creative Solutions: The collaborative and open nature of charrettes fosters creativity and challenges deeply held assumptions about how to approach a problem by the charrette participants. Participants are encouraged to think outside the box and develop innovative solutions that might not emerge in a more conventional planning process.
Achieving Resource Efficient Decarbonization (RED): Charrettes enable stakeholders to develop highly strategic plans to transition a building away from on-site fossil fuel over time in a way that does not diminish high-performance operations, contains operating and capital expenses, and maintains a complex urban systems perspective including considerations relating to infrastructure and natural resources.
The Design Charrette Process
Charrettes are conducted just after a decarbonization concept plan is created and initial decarbonization measures are framed. A successful charrette requires being prepared to discuss the existing conditions of the building in detail, various decarbonization measures and approaches considered, and an understanding of the social and market conditions influencing the building owner’s decision making. The charrette process includes:
Preparation: Successful charrettes require careful preparation. This includes identifying key stakeholders and inviting them to join, gathering relevant data, and setting clear objectives for the workshop.
Workshop Session: During the charrette, the project team presents their building existing conditions and decarbonization approaches and engage in brainstorming, design review, and business discussions with a team of technical experts and industry leaders.
Iteration and Feedback: Ideas generated during the sessions can be reviewed and refined through multiple rounds of feedback and additional charrettes as needed. This iterative process helps to improve and perfect the proposed solutions.
Implementation and Follow-Up: The final step is to translate the charrette outcomes into a formal strategic decarbonization plan and business case that leads to real-world actions. This may involve further planning, securing funding, and ongoing community engagement.
Design charrettes are a powerful tool for addressing complex decarbonization challenges, especially in the planning and early implementation phase. With collaboration, creativity, and iteration, charrettes enable the development of effective and sustainable strategies to reduce carbon emissions from buildings.
Want to review your decarbonization plan with our team of experts?
Through the Empire Building Challenge (EBC), NYSERDA is supporting forward-thinking leaders in the real estate and engineering industries, in the quest to find workable and scalable, cost-effective approaches to retrofit tall, complex, and hard-to-decarbonize buildings in New York. Partners and projects funded through the flagship $50 million demonstration program are working to reach a zero-emissions future. The groundbreaking work of these leaders is presented in this Playbook, which showcases a novel, compelling framework that can unlock opportunities for decarbonizing most buildings in a cost-effective manner, over time. We call the framework Resource Efficient Decarbonization.
To date, NYSERDA has partnered with 27 commercial and multifamily real estate owners who have committed to eliminate carbon emissions from some of New York State’s tallest and most iconic buildings. These partners have pledged to decarbonize over 128 million square feet of space, and more than 3,500 units of affordable housing. The scale of these partner commitments and the early success of EBC demonstration projects sends a clear signal that New York’s real estate industry is ready to accelerate investment in the buildings of the future.
Beyond these commitments, EBC partners collectively control and manage over 400 million square feet of real estate in New York. This amounts to over 20% of commercial office space in New York City, and more than 200,000 housing units throughout the State, representing a potential for impact much greater than the sum of its parts. The lessons learned during the planning, design, and implementation of EBC projects pave the way for the most viable solutions to gain traction and scale throughout the State, reinforcing progress toward the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 85% by 2050.
Understand the real-world implications and successes of the Empire Building Challenge through this in-depth article, “How to get New York City’s biggest buildings to zero carbon,” by Canary Media. This piece highlights the practical steps and measures being taken to reduce carbon footprints across New York’s architectural landscape, showcasing the challenge as a beacon for carbon-neutral aspirations worldwide.
The discovery phase is intended to provide an initial understanding of the building’s existing conditions, current challenges, and potential opportunities. The data and insights gathered during this phase will be used to create the building’s calibrated energy model. Key activities in this workstream include:
Collecting and reviewing relevant building information
Observing building operations under different conditions
Testing subsystems and their interactions
Creating the Business-as-Usual (BAU) base case
This workstream is critical because it grounds the project team in the reality of the building’s current performance. It also helps build a jointly owned process for uncovering early energy or carbon reduction opportunities that can increase trust and enthusiasm to identify more complex measures as the project progresses.
At the end of this phase, the team should have a clear understanding of the building energy systems, its historical energy and carbon profile, the potential impact of local laws or other building requirements, opportunities for additional metering, and preliminary energy and carbon reduction opportunities.
This workstream provides vital information on current challenges, near and longer-term carbon reduction opportunities, and the accuracy of the energy model. It also creates early wins that build momentum and trust. Getting the most out of this work requires trust-based collaboration between multiple stakeholders, including facilities managers, operations staff, the energy modeler, external contractors, and design engineers. Engaging with tenants to get insight into what drives their loads can also add value and inform this process. Data and insights on the building’s existing condition typically arise from four sources:
Design documents
Data from metered systems
Direct observation and testing
Building operations team feedback
Each source is important, but it is the integration across these four categories of data that leads to deep operational insights and identification of major areas of opportunity.
Inputs
Cross-disciplinary, trust-based collaboration
Tenant insights
Activities
Gather Information: In this phase, project teams should work with the building management and operations teams to collect key information using the sample checklist shown below.
Architectural drawings will be used to build the energy model geometry and assign performance characteristics to exterior wall assemblies.
Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing Drawings: · Mechanical Schedules · Mechanical Riser Diagrams · M-Drawings (Schedules) of Retrofit/Upgraded Equipment or a Description of Changes · Electrical Schedules · Electrical Riser Diagrams · Lighting Schedules and Detail Sheets · Plumbing Schedules · Plumbing Riser Diagrams
MEP drawings will be used to build the energy-consuming systems in the energy model. These documents will also inform opportunities for equipment replacements based on end of useful life and can be referenced when evaluating equipment locations and available space.
Utility Data: · Minimum 12 months of data for all incoming utilities including electricity, natural gas, district steam, fuel oil · Data from tenant electrical sub-meters (if available) · Data from central plant BTU meters (if available)
Building utility bills showing annual energy consumption and tariffs are required to create an initial energy model. Utility bills allow the energy modeler to calibrate the total energy consumption and the breakdown by fuel type, which is important to track as different fuel sources have different greenhouse gas emissions and associated energy costs.
BMS Operational Information: · Fan run hours · Damper and valve positions · Air and water flow rates · Air handling unit supply air set points · Space temperature set points · Air, water and space temperatures · Chiller/cooling tower/boiler entering and leaving water temperatures · Pump flows during peak and off-peak times · Fan and pump electrical consumption and demand data from VFDs
Relevant BMS parameters include: · Meter data · Equipment hours of operation · Temperature setpoints · Data trends · Fault detection · System mode (manual versus override)
Historical data from the BMS can help align modeled energy use breakdowns with actual operation. Collating and reviewing this data can provide insights into building operations. Sometimes building operation differs from the document design, standards, and even the facilities team’s own understanding as system modifications are made incrementally over the years. Live data can be used to verify system schedules, turndown, and setpoints and drive even more accurate modeling of building operations. Building management systems provide insight into how the building is performing in real-time.
Operator Interviews
Information gathered from building operators can provide deep operation insights, serve to develop trust, and identify areas of opportunity for improvement.
Existing Capital Plans
It is also important to gather data on the “business as usual” (BAU) plan for future capital and operational expenditures. Doing so allows the team to compare ECMs against already planned expenditures and to begin to understand the sequence and timing of ECMs within the context of already-planned building upgrades.
Lease Turnover Schedules
Having insight into lease turnover schedules can help define opportunities for engaging tenants in the low carbon retrofit process and identifying proper phasing of decarbonization solutions in tenant spaces.
Survey the Building: Understanding a building’s existing conditions requires time on-site. Design drawings, operator interviews, and utility data all provide valuable insight, but do not capture the nuances of how the building runs day-in and day-out. Project teams should plan to conduct an initial site walkthrough to confirm high-level information about the building equipment, systems, and operations strategies shortly after project kickoff. As the study unfolds, additional site visits to verify information, gain additional clarity on certain conditions, or evaluate the feasibility of implementing ECMs will be necessary. The more time the project team spends in the building, the easier it will be to capture the building’s existing conditions in the building energy model and to develop ECMs that are feasible. When completing the building walkthrough, the project team should evaluate the following:
Space temperatures: does the space temperature feel too low or too high?
Infiltration conditions: are there noticeable drafts within the space?
Pipe trim and valving: is there proper instrumentation within the system?
Unoccupied space conditions: is equipment running when it should be off?
Central plant operations: is equipment running more often than it needs to be?
Piping/duct conditions: are there noticeable leaks or inefficiencies within the distribution?
Multiple controls for different equipment within a single space or physically grouped thermostats: is it possible that the controls are causing conflicting operation?
Deploy Additional Metering (if required): Collecting documentation and surveying the building will highlight gaps in data or information needed to build a calibrated energy model. To fill these gaps, the project team may elect to deploy additional metering to capture the missing information. Metering ultimately reduces speculation and provides real-time insight into the building’s operations. Project teams should execute the following steps when developing a metering strategy:
Identify and create an inventory of existing meters, submeters and instrumentation.
Verify the accuracy of existing meters and ensure they are properly connected and integrated in the building management system (BMS).
Gain direct access to view the BMS data. Ideally, the team will have viewing access to real-time building operations during the entire duration of the project.
Identify areas where additional meters will be required.
Develop a deployment program for additional metering needs including preferred vendors, meter types, meter quantities, locations for placement, and an installation schedule.
Observe and Test Systems: Building system assessments and functional tests are great ways to capture operating parameters, evaluate performance, and identify issues that can be resolved with retro-commissioning. Project teams should conduct some or all the following building tests to further inform the study:
Test/Assessment
Goals
Reference/Procedure
Building envelope performance and infiltration
Understand the conduction losses/gains through the envelope. This will inform potential envelope opportunities and the baseline energy model.
Refer to ASTM E1186 – 17 for standard practices for air leakage site detection in building envelopes and air barrier systems.
Tenant electric load disaggregation, i.e. plug loads, lighting, IT
Identify high consumption loads within tenant spaces to target critical loads and opportunities.
Select one or two tenants and install submeters on their floor (can be temporary), separating out loads by lighting, IT, plug loads. Analyze consumption and data trends to develop energy conservation measures.
Setpoints and setbacks in all spaces (tenant areas, common area, IT rooms, MEP) during winter and summer seasons
Determine the most energy efficient setpoint/setback while maintaining a comfortable space. Evaluate what is possible within each space. Evaluate the ability of the system to recover from the setback without causing excessive utility demand.
Test potential setpoint and setback temperatures within each space type to determine the optimal energy efficient condition.
Airside controls
Verify that airside controls are configured to optimize energy and indoor air quality. Identify easy-to-implement and inexpensive controls ECMs.
Test procedures will vary based upon the type of airside equipment in use; however, the following assessments are applicable to many airside configurations and can act as a starting point: Step 1: Verify that static pressure setpoint controls are correct per the sequence of operations or current facility requirements. Step 2: Verify that supply air temperature resets are programmed and operating within the correct range. Step 3: Verify that terminal box minimum and maximum setpoint are appropriately set per the latest balancing report. Step 5: Confirm if outdoor airflow stations are installed, and if so, verify that the appropriate amount of outside air is being delivered per the design documents or current facility requirements. Step 6: Verify if a demand control ventilation (DCV) program is in place. If so, confirm that outside airflows are reduced as occupancy is reduced. Step 7: Verify that turndown controls are appropriately reducing equipment temperatures or flows in low load conditions.
Waterside controls
Verify that waterside controls are configured to optimize energy and are load-dependent.
Identify easy-to-implement and inexpensive controls ECMs.
Test procedures will vary based upon the type of waterside equipment in use; however, the following assessments are applicable to many waterside configurations and can act as a starting point: Step 1: Verify that static pressure setpoint controls are correct per the sequence of operations or current facility requirements. Step 2: Verify that supply or return temperature resets are programmed and operating within the correct range. Step 3: Confirm if an economizer mode is available, and if so, verify that the system appropriately enables this mode in certain weather conditions. Step 4: Verify that turndown controls are appropriately reducing equipment temperatures or flows in low load conditions.
BMS anomalies and faults
Identify discrepancies in what the BMS is outputting on the front-end versus the actual observed conditions. Identify easy-to-implement and inexpensive controls ECMs.
For each tested system, compare the BMS outputs to the actual measured data or observed condition. Identify the root cause of the discrepancy and resolve.
Outputs
An additional metering strategy with a timeline for installation and a plan for measurement & verification of new meters.
A preliminary list of operational adjustments and retro-commissioning issues based upon building surveys and building system assessment/tests.
A plan for implementing operational opportunities like setbacks and setpoint adjustments.
Lessons Learned and Key Considerations
Investigation and discovery are an iterative process: — Information from all avenues including reviewing design drawings, walking the building, talking to the facilities team, and performing building tests will be required to create a full picture of the building’s existing condition. Consistent feedback is the key to success.
Organization should be a top priority: — The amount of information collected on the building will be significant. To ease the burden of developing an energy model for the building, information should be verified and organized so that it can be easily referenced throughout the project.
Business operations are as important as facility operations: Energy studies tend to focus only on the architectural and MEP operations within the building. Project teams spend a lot of time understanding how equipment and systems operate and perform, but often don’t spend enough time considering the building’s existing lease turnover schedules, existing capital plans, or hold strategy. These business considerations are critical to understanding the types of decarbonization strategies that building ownership are likely to invest in.
2. Build the “Business-as-Usual” Base Case
Building the business-as-usual (BAU) base case occurs between the Discovery and Energy Modeling phases and includes an analysis of the building’s utility data to gain insight into how the building uses energy at a high level and how that consumption translates to carbon emissions. From this analysis, the project team will be able to evaluate the building’s exposure to mandates such as Local Law 97.
Inputs
Building the BAU base case requires obtaining one full year of utility data, at a minimum.
Activities
Utility Analysis (Baseline Condition): As the project team learns the building, one full year of utility data (at a minimum) will be collected. The project team should visualize this data monthly to further develop its understanding of how and when the building uses energy. The following list of questions can be used to guide the analysis:
What fuel types are consumed by the building?
When are fuel types used the most or the least and why?
Are there unexpected usage peaks for certain fuel types?
What is the building Energy Use Intensity (EUI) and how does it compare to peer buildings?
What is the building Energy Cost Intensity (ECI) and how does it compare to buildings?
What service class is the building in and what is the tariff structure for that service class?
How does demand correlate with cost?
Based on the results of this activity, the project team will begin to form hypotheses about how building systems interact, which end uses are the most energy intensive, and where deeper energy and carbon reduction strategies may be pursued.
Building Performance Standard Impact Analysis: Depending on the jurisdiction in which the deep energy retrofit study is taking place, it may be beneficial for the project team to evaluate the building’s current performance against mandates or building performance standards (BPS) that are in effect. In New York City, for example, Local Law 97 is a BPS that many building owners are focused on. Other jurisdictions may have energy use intensity (EUI) targets or other metrics for performance. The outcome of the impact analysis may help to inform the overall decarbonization approach for the building. Project teams should execute the following steps to conduct a BPS impact analysis:
Step 1: Aggregate annual utility data by fuel type.
Step 2: Convert raw data into the appropriate BPS metric. In the example of LL97, annual fuel consumption is converted to annual carbon emissions with carbon coefficients that are published in the law.
Step 3: Compare the building’s annual performance against the BPS performance criteria.
Step 4: Consider how the building’s performance might change over time as the electric grid decarbonizes. In the example of LL97, a building’s carbon emissions associated with electricity consumption will naturally decline over time as the grid decarbonizes.
Step 5: Calculate impacts of compliance or non-compliance with the BPS. For LL97, building emissions in excess of the allowable carbon limit results in an annual financial penalty.
Step 6: Share results with the building management and ownership teams to further inform that building decarbonization approach.
During the energy retrofit process, the team will discover simple ways to reduce energy consumption that can be implemented almost immediately. With real-time data, the BMS allows the team to analyze how effective the changes to the system are.
Outputs
Deliverables for this task include the following:
Energy, carbon & cost end use breakdowns (monthly)
Demand and tariff structure analysis
Mandate or Building Performance Standard impact analysis
Lessons Learned and Key Considerations
Visualize the data: — Data visualizations can bring insights to light and help project teams explain these insights to non-technical audiences. Making complex energy analysis accessible to all members of the project team, including those without technical backgrounds, will lead to a more engaging and actionable process for all.
BPS impact assessments can alter the deep energy retrofit approach: — Mandates and building performance standards are often successful in getting building owners to think more critically about existing building energy and carbon performance; however, the anticipated impact of a BPS can alter how the project team approaches a deep retrofit project. For example, if an Owner discovers that their building is not subject to non-compliance penalties until 2030 or 2035, they may elect to wait on larger retrofit projects than they would have if penalties were imminent in 2024. It’s important that project teams review BPS exposure with the Owner before settling on a particular decarbonization strategy or timeline.
Consider the grid: — When evaluating a building’s anticipated performance over time in the BAU base case, the project team must take grid decarbonization into account. The overall outlook for the building can change drastically with and without grid decarbonization. Both scenarios must be explored and discussed with the building owner and management team.
3. Identify Preliminary ECMs and Carbon Reduction Strategies
Inputs
Based on the work completed during the “Learn the Building” and “Build the BAU Base Case” tasks, the project team should already have a sense of the ECMs that are a good fit for the building. The project team should review the outcomes of the work done up to this point and develop a list of preliminary strategies so the team can level set on an approach as the project enters the Energy & Carbon Modeling phase.
Activities
• Develop a Tiered List of ECMs: Through the document collection and building system assessments, the project team likely identified low or no-cost operational items that can be implemented immediately. These simple items should be grouped and presented as Tier 1 measures. Deeper measures that require more upfront capital and/or have a longer lead time should be separated out into Tier 2 items. Tiers can be based upon cost or timeframe for implementation. Categorizing measures in this way will support building owner decision-making.
• Conduct a Qualitative Assessment of ECMs: Once the measures are appropriately categorized into tiers, the project team should generate a qualitative assessment of each measure, based on metrics that are important to the building management team. For example, one building team may identify disruption to tenants as their primary go/no-go metric when deciding which strategies deserve deeper analysis. Metrics will vary from project to project.
• Present and Solicit Feedback: Present the tiered list of ECMs, along with the qualitative assessment, and solicit feedback from the building management team. Eliminate ideas that don’t meet the team’s decarbonization approach and welcome new items that the building team may want to pursue that were not originally considered. This process will bolster team engagement and ensure that time spent in the energy model is dedicated to measures that will be considered seriously by the building team for implementation.
Outputs
The output of this task will be a finalized list of energy reduction strategies to study the next phase: the Energy & Carbon Modeling Phase.
Lessons Learned and Key Considerations
Solicit feedback early and often: — In any deep energy retrofit study, there will be several opportunities for the building to reduce energy and carbon. Some of these strategies will be reasonable to the building management and ownership teams, and others will not. To avoid going down the wrong road and analyzing a set of solutions that don’t align with the building team’s vision, the project team should present potential strategies early on and gain consensus on the decarbonization approach before analyzing measures in the building energy model.
Federal Incentives for Decarbonizing Large Buildings
Leveraging the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL)
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a $370 billion dollar investment in US climate action, the largest in history. It is estimated to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 405 by 2030 versus the 2005 baseline. Passed in 2022, the IRA, paired with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and other federal policies and initiatives, offers a suite of federal incentives aimed at promoting the decarbonization of large buildings. These incentives are designed to encourage building owners to invest in energy-efficient and sustainable technologies, thereby reducing their carbon footprint and contributing to national climate goals.
Key components relevant to large building owners include:
Purpose: Encourages the installation of energy-efficient systems in commercial buildings.
Eligibility: Applicable to commercial building owners for both new and existing buildings and available to architects, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and other designers of tax-exempt buildings.
Benefit:
Increases deduction from $1.80/square foot to sliding scale of $2.50-$5.00.
Projects must achieve 25%-50% better performance than applicable ASHRAE 90.1 standard (starting with ASHRAE 90.1-2007 for projects placed in service in 2023-2026, and 90.1-2019 for projects placed in service starting in 2027).
Creates new pathway for existing building retrofits to more easily access the deduction by demonstrating 25-50% energy use intensity improvement over one year to receive sliding scale deduction of $2.50-$5.00.
IRS released new Form 7205 for claiming 179D. Awaiting guidance on filing.
Unlike other incentives, 179D is permanent, and adjusts annually for inflation.
Creates new pathway for nonprofit entities to access deduction by allocating it to project designer (as government entities have been able to do).
Purpose: Supports the adoption of renewable energy systems, such as rooftop solar, geothermal, CHP and storage in commercial buildings and at the utility-scale.
Eligibility: Available to owner of renewable energy project. Non-taxable entities may access this tax credit using direct pay. All other entities may use transferability.
Direct Pay: New options for “direct pay”–also called “elective pay”–for government and nonprofit entities to use credit even without tax liability. Starting in 2024, direct pay is phased out for projects larger than 1MW that does not meet domestic content.
Purpose: Expanded tax credit for EV charging systems and other alternative fuel vehicle infrastructure through 2032.
Eligibility: Businesses and individuals that place qualified refueling property into service during the tax year.
Benefit:
Credit of 30% of expenses up to $100,000 per charging/fueling unit on commercial properties, including retail, office, etc. (Past cap was $30,000 per property.)
Starting in 2024, eligible properties must be in defined rural or low income census tracts. See map here for eligible tracts.
Purpose: Aims to finance a wide array of projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with a focus on disadvantaged communities.
Benefit: Creates a new $27B “green bank” through EPA to stand up national climate financing initiative, with three funding buckets: $7B for Solar for All, which will funds states, tribal governments, municipalities, and financial nonprofits to set up low-income solar programs across the country. $6B for Clean Communities Investment Accelerator and $14B for National Clean Investment Fund to fund financial nonprofits to use a range of financial tools to support decarbonization projects in low-income and disadvantaged communities.
Eligibility: Targeted at state, local, and tribal governments, as well as financial non-profit organizations. Awards will be announced in March 2024, with funding rolling out in July 2024 and financing offerings available soon after.
Purpose: Supports the development and implementation of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Benefit: Provides $5 billion in grants to states, local governments, tribes, and territories to develop and implement ambitious plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollution. $250M for planning grants, with one $3M grant for each participating state to develop plans to reduce GHG, along with smaller grants to the largest 67 metropolitan areas and to tribal governments. Learn more about your state or local plans. Balance of $4.6B for implementation grants awarded on a competitive basis. State and local governments must be part of a planning grant to be eligible for implementation grants, with applications due April 1, 2024.
Eligibility: State, MSA, and tribal territories are eligible.
Key programs relevant to multifamily building owners include:
Previously limited to multifamily buildings three stories or less, updates make it accessible to all multifamily at $2,500/$5,000 per unit.
Prevailing wage provisions apply to multifamily projects, which receive reduced credit of $500/$1,000 without meeting them.
Credit taken by contractor in tax year home was acquired (i.e. sold or leased).
Direct Pay: Does not include direct pay or transfer provisions. But the IRA made the credit available for use with Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) projects without reducing LIHTC basis, increasing its value for affordable housing.
Purpose: Provides funding for energy and water efficiency improvements, indoor air quality enhancements, and resilience measures in HUD-assisted multifamily properties.
Benefit: Offers $1 billion in grants and up to $4B in loan authority for projects that improve energy or water efficiency, enhance indoor air quality or sustainability, implement zero-emission electricity generation, low-emission building materials or processes, energy storage, or building electrification strategies, or make properties more resilient to climate impacts. Three funding buckets:
Elements: Up to $750,000 per property or $40,000 per unit for specific resilience or efficiency strategies, such as installing heat pumps, with $140 million in total funding.
Leading Edge: Up to $10 million per property or $60,000 per unit for completing a multifaceted renovation that earns an ambitious green building certification such as LEED Zero, with $400 million in total funding.
Comprehensive: Up to $20 million per property or $80,000 per unit for deep utility retrofits and climate resilience upgrades. Includes $42.5M for energy and water benchmarking activities.
Eligibility: Owners of HUD-assisted multifamily properties are eligible for this funding. HUD will also conduct energy and water benchmarking of HUD-assisted properties.
Purpose: Encourages whole-home energy efficiency improvements.
Benefit: Provides $4.3 billion in grants to State energy offices and tribal entities to develop and implement a whole-home rebate program. Available to households of any income and owners of multifamily projects. Higher cost share for households below 80% of Area Median Income (AMI). Rebates typically range from $2,000-$8,000 for individual household or multifamily unit, or potentially higher.
Eligibility: Available to households participating in the program developed by their state energy office or tribal entity.
Purpose: Supports the electrification of homes and the use of high-efficiency electric appliances.
Benefit: Allocates $4.5 billion in grants to State energy offices and tribal entities to develop and implement a high-efficiency electric home rebate program. This program offers point-of-sale electrification rebates exclusively for low and moderate-income households (below 150% of AMI), up to $14,000 per unit. low- and moderate-income households, including for owners of qualifying multifamily projects. Covers 50% of expenses for incomes 80%-150% of AMI and 100% for incomes below 80% of AMI. ncludes point of sale rebates.
Eligibility: Low and moderate-income households are eligible for this program. Multifamily buildings must have at least 50% of residents below 150% of AMI to be eligible for 50% cost share, and at least 50% of residents below 80% of AMI to be eligible for 100% cost share.
Purpose: Supports the adoption of updated building energy codes, including zero-energy codes.
Benefit: Provides $1 billion in grants to state and local governments to adopt and implement updated building energy codes.
Eligibility: State and local governments are eligible to apply for these grants to update their building energy codes.
The Inflation Reduction Act provides a comprehensive set of incentives for large building owners to decarbonize their properties. By leveraging these federal programs, building owners can reduce their environmental impact, lower operational costs, and contribute to the broader goals of sustainability and climate resilience.
Information on “Direct Pay” and Transfer Provision
Direct pay (formally called elective pay) allows tax-exempt entities, including municipalities, schools, states, universities, nonprofits, hospitals, etc., to receive payment – or essentially a rebate – for the amount of the tax credit even if they have no tax liability.
Applies to many but not all IRA tax incentives. Most relevant for buildings, applies to ITC for renewable energy, storage, microgrids, etc., and EV charging infrastructure credits.
Credit is taken annually for the tax year property is placed into service (ie rooftop solar placed in service in Sept. 2023, credit taken when filing 2023 taxes in 2024.)
Filers required to submit pre-filing registration delineating projects/property and receive a registration number for each project/property to include on tax returns.
Tax form used for direct pay may vary – typically Form 990-T for those that don’t file federal taxes.
Transferability
Entities ineligible for direct pay can now transfer, or essentially sell, credits.
Reports indicate credits are selling for approximately 95 cents on the dollar.
This resource is a compilation of content from USGBC and RMI resources. For more information, please visit the US Department of Energy and IRS websites. For further information on incentives for federal buildings or individual households, please refer to USGBC’s Buildings and the IRA presentation. More information and resources are found on our resource library under Federal Incentives.
RMI’s collection of resources including articles, tools, and success stories to understand and maximize the benefits of IRA, the BIL, and related federal policies and incentives.
High level overview of how much funding is available at the program level for BIL to help partners across the country know what to apply for, who to contact for help, and how to get ready to rebuild.
Tool to help building owners navigate and discover the many rebates, funding opportunities, and other incentives including those available through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Hub of resources that highlight opportunities for the real estate industry to leverage and/or access federal infrastructure funds to support sustainability, resilience, health, and real estate and economic development goals.
Article explaining how can real estate developers access and leverage this funding and play a role in shaping infrastructure decisions to drive sustainability outcomes in cities
High Rise / Low Carbon Event Series: Nimble Brains for Complex Systems
As buildings transitioned from analog to digital systems, controls were dominated by platforms with high financial and educational entry thresholds. But our ability to orchestrate complex systems in buildings has transformed. It is now possible to capture and redeploy heat throughout a building, continually optimizing this thermal dispatch model in real time and keeping HVAC systems running at the highest possible level of performance, without cumbersome hardware.
Leveraging software to enable grid interactivity through building thermal management can radically reduce the amount of grid-level electric battery storage necessary, allow for better utilization of renewable electricity, smooth building demand peaks, and reduce the need for peaking natural gas power generation.
During this High Rise / Low Carbon series program developed to support the Empire Building Challenge and other NYSERDA programs, hear from experts who are deploying these technologies and utilizing Resource Efficient Decarbonization strategies to optimize performance in low-carbon retrofits.
Opening Remarks
Thomas Yeh, RTEM Advisor, NYSERDA
Moderator
Nyla Mabro, Head of Strategy & Marketing, The Clean Fight
Presenters
Matthew Sheridan, Energy Manager – Rockefeller Center, Tishman Speyer Thomas Walsh, General Manager – Manhattan West, Brookfield PropertiesPanelists Neil Breen, Vice President, Energy Services, Ramboll Javier Aleman, Principal, AXC Automation
Decarbonization Roadmap for Multifamily Affordable Housing
This manual provides a decarbonization roadmap for affordable housing in New York City. Using this document, project teams can develop long term capital plans to meet New York City’s increasingly stringent Local Law 97 greenhouse gas emissions requirements.
Improved engineering design means and methods are needed to enable and speed adoption of low-carbon retrofit technologies. High performance, low-carbon heating and cooling systems are widely available but are underutilized in the United States due to a variety of misconceptions and a lack of knowledge around thermal system interactions. Few practicing engineers prioritize recycling heat and limiting heat loss. Decarbonization requires upgrading and adapting energy distribution systems originally designed to operate with high temperature combustion to integrate with electric and renewable thermal energy systems. The engineering design industry can use a thinking framework like Resource Efficient Decarbonization (RED) to deliver projects that achieve more effective decarbonization.
This framework emerges from the Empire Building Challenge through continued collaboration among real estate partners, industry-leading engineering consultants, and NYSERDA. RED is a strategy that can help alleviate space constraints, optimize peak thermal capacity, increase operational efficiencies, utilize waste heat, and reduce the need for oversized electric thermal energy systems, creating retrofit cost compression. While RED is tailored to tall buildings in cold-climate regions, the framework can be applied across a wide array of building types, vintages, and systems. The approach incorporates strategic capital planning, an integrated design process, and an incremental, network-oriented approach to deliver building heating, cooling, and ventilation that:
Requires limited or no combustion,
Enables carbon neutrality,
Is highly efficient at low design temperatures and during extreme weather,
Is highly resilient, demand conscious, and energy grid-interactive,
Reduces thermal waste by capturing and recycling as many on-site or nearby thermal flows as possible, and
Incorporates realistic and flexible implementation strategies by optimizing and scheduling phase-in of low-carbon retrofits competing with business-as-usual.
Decarbonization Framework
Resource Efficient Decarbonization focuses on implementing enabling steps that retain a future optionality as technology and policy evolves. This framework allows a building owner or manager to take action now, instead of waiting for better technology and potentially renewing a fossil-fueled powered energy system for another life cycle.
The figure below illustrates a conceptual framework for accomplishing these objectives and overcoming the barriers. Specific measures and sequencing will be highly bespoke for a given building, but engineers and their owner clients can use this bucketed framework to place actionable projects in context of an overarching decarbonization roadmap.
Step-by-Step Process to Advise Decarbonization Efforts
Understanding a building’s fossil fuel use in detail is a critical first step. Make an effort to understand when, where, how, and why fossil fuels are being consumed at the building and under what outdoor temperature and weather conditions. Conduct a temperature BINS analysis to know how much fossil fuel is consumed during various temperature bands (typically in 5- or 10-degree increments) from design temperature up to the end of the heating season. Make an effort to understand cooling season usage patterns in detail. Go further and conduct an 8760 hour/year analysis or modeling effort to show building operation profiles with high granularity to advise targeted elimination of fossil fuel consumption.
While electrification is desirable to combat climate change, energy efficiency is a critical component of decarbonization. Reducing heating and cooling loads across all weather conditions is a major early step to achieve RED.
Identify the ways heat is being gained or lost. Hint: some places to look at are cooling towers, facades and windows, elevator machine rooms, through sewer connections, or at the ventilation exhaust system. Cooling towers operating in the winter are an obvious energy wasting activity. Seek solutions to reduce, recover, and recycle or reuse, and store this heat.
After, or in parallel with the previous steps, begin to electrify the building heat load, starting with marginal “shoulder season” loads (spring and fall). Don’t force electric heating technology such as air source heat pumps to operate during conditions for which they weren’t designed. Optimize heat pump implementation through a “right sizing” thermal dispatch approach to avoid poor project economics and higher operating expenses. This means continuing to retain an auxiliary heating source for more extreme weather conditions until fossil fuels are ready to be fully eliminated. This approach provides owners time to identify the right peak period heating solution while allowing them to act early in driving down emissions. Emissions reduced sooner are more valuable than emissions reduced in the future.
Remove connections to fossil fuels and meet decarbonization deadlines!
Take Actions with these Enabling Steps
Review
Disaggregate time-of-use profiles to identify heat waste and recovery opportunities and to right-size equipment.
Thermal dispatch strategy: layering heat capacity to optimize carbon reduction and project economics.
Reduce
Repair, upgrade and refresh envelopes.
Optimize controls.
Reconfigure
Eliminate or reduce inefficient steam and forced air distribution.
Create thermal networks and enable heat recovery.
Lower supply temperatures to ranges of optimal heat pump performance.
Segregate and cascade supply temperatures based on end-use.
Recover
Simultaneous heating and cooling in different zones of building.
Eliminate “free cooling” economizer modes.
Exhaust heat recovery; absorbent air cleaning.
Building wastewater heat recovery.
Municipal wastewater heat recovery.
Steam condensate.
Refrigeration heat rejection.
Other opportunistic heat recovery and heat networking.
Store
Store rejected heat from daytime cooling for overnight heating.
Store generated heat— centrally, distributed, or in the building’s thermal inertia.
Deploy advanced urban geothermal and other district thermal networking solutions.
Building Systems Topologies
Commercial Office
Commercial office buildings offer significant heat recovery and storing opportunities due to simultaneous heating and cooling daily profiles. As a result, offices can heat themselves much of the year with heat recovery and storage. Example load profiles for typical heating and cooling days in a commercial office building are shown in the graph below.
Multi-family
Multi-family buildings’ typical daily profiles show efficiency opportunities that can lower and flatten system peaks. This can be achieved by a variety of heat reduction, recovery, and storing strategies. Example load profiles for a typical heating day in a multifamily building are shown in the graph below.
Thermal Distribution Opportunities
The thermal energy network approach enables transaction of thermal energy to increase overall system efficiency and reduce wasted heat. The concept can be applied at the building level (with floor-by-floor heat exchange), to groups of buildings, to whole neighborhoods, or to cities. Below is an illustration of a whole-system, thermal network approach applied in an urban environment to supply clean heat in cold-climate tall buildings:
A sortable and filterable list for stakeholders big and small.
This spreadsheet was built off of the list of Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding programs published by the White House as a complement to its IRA Guidebook. First released in April, RMI updated this spreadsheet in July 2023 to reflect new information. The spreadsheet uses, as a start, the list of IRA funding programs published by the White House (“federal summary”) as a complement to its IRA Guidebook. It builds off this federal summary by increasing the ability of users to sort and filter funding sources based on criteria such as sector, topic, funding eligibility, and funding type. It also increases the comprehensiveness of the federal summary, including by adding IRA-related tax incentives, and it adjusts certain aspects of the federal summary to make them more up to date and complete.
Disclaimer: Information in this spreadsheet should be treated with an element of caution as many of these funding programs are under development and rapidly evolving.
