Lessons from New York’s Empire Building Challenge
This article, published in NESEA’s BuildingEnergy magazine (Vol. 40 No. 1), addresses common “decarbonization blind spots” that impede progress and shares insights gained from the incremental methodology and integrated design process pioneered through NYSERDA’s Empire Building Challenge.
Large commercial and residential buildings must overcome various hurdles before implementing deep retrofits or capital projects that help achieve building decarbonization. This section addresses technical barriers and questions often faced by building owners and retrofit project developers.
Below are high temperature renewable resource alternatives to district steam. These alternatives are limited and face barriers to implementation due to cost, scalability, and other factors.
Building Electric Capacity Upgrades
Local Network Electric Capacity Upgrades
Gas Utility Earnings Adjustment Mechanisms (EAM) focused on System Peak Demand Reductions
Total Connected Loads and Peak Demand drive need for capacity upgrades
Thermal Storage
Geothermal (ambient temperature), Deep Bore Geothermal (high temperature) or Shared Loop District Energy Systems provide cooling and heating with lower peak demand than standard electric equipment
Other Energy Efficiency/Conservation Measures with proven/attractive economics (these measures are limited by lack of capital or knowledge)
Behavioral Modification
Submetering and billing, potentially creates split incentive between landlord and tenant
These include multi-purpose technology for heating, cooling, heat exchange and ventilation, filtration, and/or domestic hot water.
These playbooks summarize retrofit strategies that maximize occupant comfort and energy savings through a transition from fuel to electricity- based heating, cooling and hot water systems.
Playbooks are organized by building system— lighting & loads, envelope, ventilation, heating & cooling, and domestic hot water– detailing common existing systems, typical issues, and recommended measures.
The Empire Technology Prize is a $10 million competitive opportunity for global solution providers focused on advancing building technologies for low-carbon heating system retrofits in tall commercial and multifamily buildings across New York State. This NYSERDA initiative, administered by The Clean Fight with technical support from Rocky Mountain Institute, includes a $3 million sponsorship from Wells Fargo. Accelerating low-carbon building retrofits is fundamental to New York State’s national-leading Climate Act agenda, including the goal to achieve an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
While each individual building has a unique capital improvement plan and timeline, retrofit projects or decarbonization interventions may be organized and grouped by similarity as property owners plan for the future. Below is the overarching hierarchy for decarbonization intervention points according to industry best practices:
New engineering design means and methods are needed to enable and accelerate adoption of low-carbon retrofit technologies. Efficient heating and cooling energy systems are widely available but underused due to lack of knowledge and thermal system interaction.
Decarbonization requires adapting distribution systems designed for legacy thermal supply to electric and renewable thermal energy systems. New design strategies are emerging which can help alleviate space constraint issues, provide peak thermal capacity, optimize operational efficiencies, utilize waste heat, and reduce the need for oversized, electrified thermal energy systems creating retrofit cost compression. The latest research on thermal energy networks focuses on utilizing heat and cold more sustainably by creating innovative components and control strategies for thermal systems.
In this Empire Building Challenge webinar, Cary Smith and Garen Ewbank from The GreyEdge Group provide perspectives on designing efficient thermal networks for decarbonization. The recorded discussion focuses on low temperature distribution, electrification with advanced heat pumps, thermal storage integration, and thermal interactive buildings.
The materials below were part of a presentation given on Jun 18, 2020, as part of the Empire Building Challenge, in partnership with the GreyEdge Group.
These case studies cover projects that will dramatically reduce carbon emissions with deep energy retrofits for affordable multifamily housing in the Boston area. Deep energy retrofits dramatically reduce carbon emissions. These renovations transform affordable housing to be highly energy efficient, all-electric, powered by clean renewable energy, and renovated with materials low in embodied carbon. These projects are part of the Advanced Building Construction Collaborative’s demand aggregation. This work aims to demonstrate streamlined deep energy retrofits and retrofits using advanced building construction techniques to accelerate the adoption of this work in the market.
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