Executive Director Richard Yancey (left) and Director of Educational Resources Katie Schwamb (right) presenting at two featured conference sessions.

Building Energy Exchange (BE-Ex) had a strong showing at this year’s round of New York building conferences. Between the 2024 ASHRAE Decarbonization Conference: Decarbonizing Existing Tall Buildings and NESEA BuildingEnergy NYC 2024, BE-Ex had three of its resources selected for feature in conference sessions:

• The Retrofit Playbook for Large Buildings, developed in collaboration with NYSERDA, RMI, and Urban Land Institute, is an innovative, new knowledge platform dedicated to supporting building owners, operators, and their design and engineering teams in creating cost-effective, long-term decarbonization strategies for tall buildings.
• BE-Ex’s recently published High Rise / Low Carbon Multifamily Deep Retrofit Profiles Report, created in collaboration with Level Infrastructure, NYSERDA, and Sustainable Energy Partnerships features fourteen tall, multifamily project case studies that undertook a deep retrofit which resulted in often dramatic energy reduction, primarily without much or any electrification efforts.
• The Decarbonizing NYC Offices initiative, developed with input from the Institute for Market Transformation and NYC Climate Action Alliance, and support from NYSERDA, is helping commercial real estate stakeholders collaborate to unlock meaningful energy and emissions reductions in leased office spaces. Building owners, tenants, brokers, lawyers, designers and others involved in leasing and office utilization decisions can utilize a suite of resources — including a site selection guide, model energy aligned lease clauses, high-performance fit out guide, and more practical tools to promote smart energy efficiency investments and public health, while reducing energy and carbon from NYC tenant office spaces.

At both conferences, this year’s themes centered around decarbonizing the existing building stock, focusing on replicable and scalable technical solutions, and innovation beyond what’s required to fundamentally challenge business-as-usual and simply meeting requirements. The varying sessions and surrounding conversations spotlighted storytelling by people on the ground doing the work, knowledge sharing across regions and countries on strategies and regulatory schemes and connecting industry professionals to cutting edge tools that can help them achieve cost-effective and innovative decarbonization.

After a week of robust dialogue, presentations, and networking, our team came away with the following key insights.

Don’t underestimate the importance of energy efficiency and consumption.

Here in New York City and in other real estate markets around the world, we’ve seen the industry shift its focus from energy efficiency to regulating carbon; from new construction to retrofitting existing buildings. As building industry decision makers keep pace with advancing building emissions regulation on both new and existing buildings, they must not forget the crucial importance of improving energy efficiency and decreasing energy consumption. According to Lauren Moss, Senior Vice President, Chief Sustainability Officer, Vornado Realty Trust (and BE-Ex Treasurer), we should focus on “reducing consumption first and foremost.”

Executive Director Richard Yancey (left), Amy Eickhoff of FirstService Residential (center), and Byron Stigge of Level Infrastructure (right), presenting findings from BE-Ex’s High Rise / Low Carbon Multifamily Deep Retrofit Profiles Report.

Building owners and property managers are under immense pressure to meet decarbonization mandates, such as NYC’s Local Law 97, while also meeting their tenants’ needs. Finding opportunities to operate their buildings as efficiently as possible through energy use reduction and efficiency measures can have a very large impact. By creating direct channels of communication from the boiler room to the board room, owners and managers can train the next generation of building engineers to strive for operational optimization, saving everyone money and energy.

Of the 14 buildings surveyed for our High Rise / Low Carbon Multifamily Report, the highest impact items were envelope-related, achieving an average of a 36% reduction in their site energy intensity, with several projects cutting their energy use in half. Most of the buildings profiled did not electrify space heating or cooling. While it can be natural to underestimate easy and straightforward measures, they often can generate significant savings.

Buildings must make energy efficiency and consumption reduction an explicit part of their decarbonization plan, as these efficiency and consumption improvements are powerful solutions for reducing carbon.

We need to make the solutions more efficient.

To achieve the scale of decarbonization set by public laws, company ESG goals, and international agreements, we must rapidly industrialize the available solutions. Both Will Sibia, Founder & CEO, urbs, and Laura Humphrey, Senior Director of Energy and Sustainability, L+M Development Partners, in describing their respective projects awarded through the Empire Building Challenge (EBC) program, noted that many of the technical solutions deployed are still prototypes rather than fully developed tools for mass deployment. Scaling these innovations will require ongoing collaboration between manufacturers, building designers, and energy experts.

In the meantime, understanding the long-term value and cost avoidance from strategic decarbonization efforts—such as reducing operational expenses or enhancing asset value—can help building owners make the business case for upfront investments in novel technologies that have not yet been fully industrialized.

• LEARN MORE! Read the case studies featured on the Retrofit Playbook for Large Buildings to learn more about the detailed business case estimations for the innovative retrofit projects of cohort one and two of EBC.

Having the right people at the same table is critical.

To successfully plan and execute strategic decarbonization projects, all parties involved–from owners, to consultants and designers, to contractors, and operators–must be integrated into the planning and decision-making discussions as early as possible to get everyone “speaking one language,” as put by Richard Yancey, Executive Director, BE-Ex. Ensuring that feasibility, design intent, asset planning, and, ultimately, operational optimization are resolved at the outset is key. Meaningful collaboration, like design charrettes that integrate diverse perspectives, enables project teams to cut emissions now without compromising on their future goals.

In the operations phase, open channels of conversation that are human-centric between property managers, owners, and their engineering teams enable positive lessons and new ideas to be fed back through the whole building to produce energy and cost savings across an entire portfolio of buildings.

Finally, finding technical experts that can communicate effectively to non-technical audiences is essential to educating those in less well-resourced buildings and those directly impacted by a project’s outcomes on the benefits of the retrofit measures, maintenance requirements, and necessary behavioral changes.

• LEARN MORE! Request a design charrette through NYSERDA’s free charrette program offering.

Executive Director Richard Yancey (left) speaking to industry professionals at the 2024 ASHRAE Decarbonization Conference networking hour.

BE-Ex has had a busy and rewarding conference season, learning valuable lessons of the latest industry trends and replicable, successful strategies that provide ample reasons to be optimistic about the certainty of our low-carbon future. To round out the year, Director of Educational Resources, Katie Schwamb, presented at Greenbuild 2024 in Philadelphia, PA on how high-performance building resource hubs are developing across the U.S., the various programs they provide, and how everyone can engage and benefit.

• LEARN MORE! Read more about our Building Performance Partnership hub network or how to get involved.

 

Written by Hailey Moll, Manager, Educational Resources