Trump's List for Infrastructure Projects Include Energy Storage and Grid Modernization

By Alexander Landa


Donald Trump's short time as President has already been dynamic and controversial, to put it bluntly. He's already said some things that is making the green community worry, but it looks like he's also considering to do some good in there as well. According to a Forbes article, Trump is looking to create projects relating to energy storage and grid modernization.

In Trumps Priority List of Emergency & National Security Projects, he lists off 50 items in his plan, some relating to the environment. Project #9 – Plains and Eastern Electric Transmission Lines – would carry massive amounts of energy of Oklahoma wind power to the southeast. Project #16 – TransWest Express – would move energy from Wyoming to Arizona, California, and Nevada.

Project $49 – Energy Storage and Grid Modernization – will create utility-scale batteries to store renewable energy, estimated to grow 8-times to 2.1 gigawatts by 2021.

Amazingly, these campaigns all together could add 9 gigawatts of zero-carbon, renewable power to the American grid – enough for 5 million homes.

If you're interested in learning more about grid modernization, come to tomorrow's morning session. For those interested in hearing more about innovative technology, attend our Building Tech Forum in a few weeks. Don't forget that members get discounts to every event we hold! Become a member now.

Triumph Modular: Emergence of 10-Year Buildings for Long-Term Campus Planning

By Linda Bee at Triumph Modular


The January/February 2017 issue of Facility Manager Magazine features an article titled “The Surprising Emergence of 10-Year Buildings for Long-Term Campus Planning.”  It’s written by Rusty Williams whose focus here at Triumph Modular is educational and special-use buildings.  The article explores how colleges and universities are turning to modular construction for much quicker time-to-occupancy, and to have the option to expand, relocate or remove buildings within 8 to 10 years.  Read the full article from APPA Facilities Manager Magazine.

How can you use modular buildings in long-term campus planning?

Here are a few excerpts from this timely article:  Conventional wisdom says that there are two kinds of buildings: permanent and temporary. Most construction is considered permanent – designed to last 100 years or more. Temporary structures have typically served a more tactical purpose such as “swingspace” used during construction or in the event of a flood, fire, or other unforeseen circumstance. But, increasingly, schools are seeking facilities that combine the aesthetic characteristics of permanent buildings with the option to expand, contract or remove the building entirely within a relatively short timeframe.

Choosing Modular Construction

For example, Harvard University recently opened
a new “Life Lab” in the innovation district of their Allston campus. The existing i-Lab has been used for five years as an incubator for dozens of startups and entrepreneurs. Harvard wanted to offer a similar facility with state-of-the-art wet lab space nearby to support research and development of new biotech, pharma, and other life-science technologies. Flexibility, along with speed-to-occupancy, were the primary reasons that Harvard chose modular construction.

A New Norm: An Adaptable, Configurable Campus

As surprising as that may sound, planning for reconfiguration or relocation after a relatively short period may become the norm for new buildings. Facilities need to support rapidly changing technology and encourage cross-department collaboration so it’s almost certain that modifications will be necessary within a decade.  Google presents a similar vision for the future of buildings in their planning for a new campus in Mountain View California. In the company’s overview video, David Radcliff, Google’s Director of Real Estate perfectly summarizes the challenge facilities planners face when noting Google’s approach to design a development – “How will we work 15 or 20 years from now? We don’t know exactly what it’s going to be, but we know that it needs to be incredibly flexible space.”

Joining ILFI – a new Collaboration

By Grey Lee, Executive Director

In 2016, the Living Future Collaborative Boston (a.k.a. The Collaborative) connected with the USGBC MA Chapter, which had both been good friendly peer organizations with lots of overlapping members, to begin to work jointly more formally.

USGBC MA has officially signed an MOU with the ILFI (International Living Future Institute) to share staff resources and co-market our events.

Thus, Collaboratively, we will continue to work together to advance Living Buildings and other components of the ILFI.


 

Greenbuild Boston 2017 Legacy Project Call for Proposals

By USGBC MA


The USGBC Massachusetts Chapter is pleased to announce that we are currently planning our 2017 Greenbuild Boston Legacy Project! Similar to what Los Angeles did for Greenbuild 2016, and what Washington D.C. did in 2015, Boston is planning to make sure that the city – and the world has a whole – never forgets the impact that can be made by the green building community. Below, you will find information on how you can submit a proposal to see your idea come to life, which will remain a staple of Greenbuild history forever.

Request for Proposals

Legacy Project Greenbuild Boston 2017

On November 8, 2017, USGBC Massachusetts Chapter and the City of Boston will host the 2017 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo. Our parent organization, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) organizes this annual event, which will bring over 30,000 sustainability leaders and advocates to our region.

Click here to read this information as a pdf. 

The theme for the Boston conference is “ALL IN” to encompass the breadth and diversity of the sustainability and green building movement drawing on Boston’s status as the place where it all began. Along these same lines, USGBC and USGBC MA seek to leave Greater Boston with a lasting gift. The “Legacy Project” will provide a significant contribution to greening the local area, while striving to meet some, if not all, of the following criteria:

  • Serves as a permanent gift of ongoing service to the Host city;
  • Serves people of varied socio-economic backgrounds;
  • Is Greenbuild oriented (i.e., showcases sustainable and green practices and benefits);
  • Is community supported;
  • Has an educational aspect.

Important Dates

  • Issuance of RFP – January 27, 2017
  • Deadline for Submission of Questions to USGBC MA – February 17, 2017 (by 5:00pm EST)
  • Responses to Questions returned by – February 21, 2017
  • Proposal Submission Due Date – March 6, 2017 (by 5:00pm EST)
  • Finalists selected by Legacy Project Committee – March 13, 2017
  • Final Presentations/Judging to Boston Greenbuild Host Committee – March 21, 2017
  • Selected Legacy Project Announced – March 23, 2017

Chapter Member Profile: Andrea Love of Payette

By USGBC MA

Every Friday, we like to give thanks to members of our Chapter who stand out for their valuable contributions to our community. Andrea Love, Director of Building Science at Payette, is a member of our Board of Directors and frequently goes out of her way to support our Chapter’s mission. Just last night Andrea made it so we could hold our Annual General Meeting at Payette, and that deserves an extra thanks.

Her role as building scientist has her pushing the performance and lowering the environmental impact of every project she’s involved in, with a strong focus of bringing in new sustainability knowledge through research and project exploration.

Additionally, she leads a number of internal research projects, and currently is the Principal Investigator on the 2012 AIA Upjohn Grant on “Thermal Performance of Facades” a research project focused on thermal bridging. She also leads the firm’s efforts on the AIA 2030 Commitment, tracking and benchmarking the performance of projects across the firm. On top of all of the above, she’s a Lecturer at MIT in the Department of Architecture’s Building Technology group where she teaches a class on building envelope performance.

Annual General Meeting Recap

By Grey Lee, Executive Director


See more photos in our Flickr album.

What an amazing community of practitioners!

Last night, graciously hosted at Payette at Atlantic Wharf, we gathered as a community for the 9th Annual General Meeting of the USGBC MA Chapter. 

Our agenda was extensive, yet efficiently delivered:

  • Report on the state of the organization
  • Introduce and thank the Staff
  • Thank the Membership and Sponsors
  • Hear about our extensive advocacy work
  • Learn about the Greenbuild opportunity
  • A word from our Platinum Sponsor, National Grid
  • Announcing our MOU with the International Living Future Institute
  • Introduce the ENGAGE game
  • The Volunteer Appreciation Ceremony
  • Conclude the Elections for the Board of Directors

It was great to see so many wonderful people who have been a part of this community for so many years. It was delightful to have just as many new faces show up to connect with our mission.

I had the honor and privilege of providing remarks and presenting to the assembled 100+ crowd the “State of the Chapter” report.

We are proud of our 600+ dues-paying members and 35 contributing Sponsoring Partners. We have strategic relationships with media organizations, academic institutions and community groups like the Codman Square NDC, Youthbuild and the Acadia Center.

I was able to share the work we have done to advance our mission through advocacy: describing our priorities for the coming legislative session and some of our victories from the recent past.


We will continue to push for net metering equity to “fix the solar bill” so low-income communities can benefit from the advance of distributed solar generation. We will fight to expand PACE to the residential sector in Massachusetts so this effective financial tool can be used on houses, not just commercial properties. And we are working with municipalities to emulate the Net Zero Action Plan process which was so successful in Cambridge – so more communities can get on track to dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

We celebrated our victories on net metering, on strengthening energy efficiency in the building code, and with commercial PACE. Advocacy is a place where all of our members can really make a difference.

We also celebrated the impressive 22.35 MSF of newly LEED certified space in Massachusetts which means we are #1 in the USGBC Top Ten States for LEED. This stunning achievement was only possible because our community has worked, and continues to work, so hard to attain. People make a difference. People like those in the room last night are leading their firms, guiding their clients, and attaining excellence in the built environment. Congratulations and let's help each other to continue this trajectory.

Judy Nitsch, Co-Chair of the Greenbuild 2017 Host Committee conveyed the major points of the Greenbuild effort and invited members to participate in the work through the many subcommittees.

We heard from Paul Wassink at National Grid about their new Demand Response program. Building operators can engage with their power provided to shed loads at peak demand to save premium rate charges and to help improve the sustainability of the entire grid system.

Alex Landa, our Communications Manager, introduced our new individual member participation platform, ENGAGE. This new survey-like-game system enables a person to track the things they do which support our mission. You get points for helping us do advocacy, providing education instruction, doing service work or other things. You can help our community by serving as a Mentor and get points that way too. We will run the contest every quarter to see how much friendly competition we can generate in the coming months.

Thank you to our all-star volunteers who earned worthy recognition last night for their work to support our organization.


 

Shining Star of the Chapter: Bill Wolmedorf of the Residential and Emerging Professional Committees
Stepper-Upper: Jess Halvorsen on Events
New Hit Wonder: Aminah McNulty of Emerging Professionals
Special Recognition: Lindsay Machamer for Tours, with Emerging Professionals
And, Emerging Professional of the Year: Jenna Dancewicz

We also recognized departing Board Members: Jim Newman, Carolyn Day, Sandy Brock and Brice Hereford.
I did make a point to recognize our Board and explain how their board status prevented them from being in the running for these volunteer awards. But they can play the ENGAGE game!

Noteworthy Volunteers beyond the award-winners included: Matt Smith, Ryan Montoni, Kate Bubriski, Rebecca Slocum, Jared Gentlucci, Suzi Price, Kristen Malayk, Craig Foley, David Bliss, Jasmine Abdollahi, Adrian Charest, Jessie Miller, Bill Tobin, Kimberly Le, Molly Cox, Mark Pignatelli, Dana Anderson, Andrew Vitvitsky, Chris Meier, Alana Spencer, Julia Musso, Jason Zogg, Tony Ransom, Emma Corbalan and Blake Jackson.

And finally, to conclude the formal event, we announced the new Directors for our Board:

Henrietta Davis, former Mayor of Cambridge MA
JC Courtney, Siemens Industry
Rebecca Hatchadorian, Arup

Re-elected Directors were:

Barbra Batshalom
John Dalzell
Shawn Hesse
Ethan Lay-Sleeper
Jim Jones
Michael Fiorillo
Mike Davis
Carrie Havey


​These join the continuing Directors: Andrea Love, Ben Myers, John Markowitz, Johanna Jobin, Darien Crimmin, Steven Burke and Samira Ahmadi

Thank you to all who came out to celebrate our march toward victory!

And, special thanks to all who made out to the after party at Little Biddy's on Pearl Street. See you next time!

 

Being Fearless: Design Professionals to the Front Lines!

By Steven Burke, USGBC MA Treasurer

As part of the green building community in Massachusetts, I am happy to serve as the Co-Chair of the Boston Society of Architects Committee on the Environment (COTE). We held our regional leadership summit on June 1 & 2, 2016, at the BSA headquarters in Boston. Over 100 sustainability practitioners gathered to build their leadership capacity and connect to share their experiences in sustainable design and green building practice.

 

We have developed a retrospective video and white paper of the procedings available here.


Keynote speaker Paul Hawken challenged the community to embrace fearlessness.  The time for hoping and waiting for change is behind us, and we must take it upon ourselves as individuals and as a community of practitioners to follow through with bold thinking and bold actions.  As Paul demonstrated, and as we know, the solutions are here, today.  It is on us to see them into implementation.

 

One of the amazing things of having 100 sustainability practitioners come together from various sectors of the AEC industry and Owner / Developer spaces, is that for us, we have redefined what competition looks like.  We are all working towards the same goal of a net positive future.  We realize that to get there, we must disregard the traditional boundaries of competitiveness across companies or hierarchies of position and title, and enable each other to be the absolute best we can be.  For us, competition is directed inward, pushing ourselves to help drive our projects, our companies, our peers, and our communities to maximize our positive impact.

 

Thank you for joining us on this work. We look forward to the next COTE Leadership Summit in 2018, to be held in Burlington, Vermont.

Building Tech Forum – All-Star Panelists Roster

By Alexander Landa


Believe it or not, but the upcoming Building Tech Forum is less than three weeks away! Now that the Annual Meeting has wrapped up, the BTF is the next big event on the horizon, and we're planning to keep you informed with all things smart cities and building technology. We're super excited to be moderating a diverse panel session so you can hear from different industries about smart cities and what it means for sustainability.

we're full steam ahead to prepare for one of our biggest events of the year, and to keep you informed with all things smart cities and building technology. We're super excited to be moderating a diverse panel session so you can hear from different industries about smart cities and what it means for sustainability.

Panelists include:

Stay tuned for more news about our upcoming Building Tech Forum! We will be giving longer bios to each of these individuals in the near future. As a reminder, members get discounts to all events that we hold, so sign up now to get a cheaper BTF ticket, and join as a member of our community.

We're Number ONE!

By Rachel Gilbert, USGBC

U.S. Green Building Council Announces: 

Massachusetts is #1 State in the Nation for LEED Green Building in 2016

Washington, D.C. — (Jan. 25, 2017) — Today, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) released its national ranking of the top states in the country for LEED green building and Massachusetts is the first state in the nation for 2016. The annual list highlights states throughout the country that made significant strides in sustainable building design, construction and transformation over the past year. 

 

This year, Massachusetts moved from third to first place with a total of 136 LEED-certified projects representing 3.73 gross square feet of certified space per resident. Massachusetts will host Greenbuild 2017, the world’s largest conference and expo dedicated to green buildings, in Boston on Nov. 8-10, 2017.

 

“Massachusetts has been a phenomenal trailblazer in green building and LEED certifications and is leading the way toward a more sustainable future for generations to come,” said Mahesh Ramanujam, president and CEO of USGBC. “The success of LEED could not happen without support from states likes Massachusetts that believe in being environmentally and socially responsible and have committed to transforming the built environment. With each new LEED certification, we are lowering carbon emissions, creating a healthier environment, driving economic growth and prioritizing sustainable practices that will positively impact the way residents, communities and cities live, work and play.”

 

According to USGBC’s 2015 Green Building Economic Impact Study, LEED construction is projected to support 155,000 total jobs in Massachusetts and have a total impact on GDP of $13.6 billion from 2015-2018. 

 

“Massachusetts has always been a fighter for what's right,” said Grey Lee, executive director, USGBC – Massachusetts Chapter. “High-performing LEED buildings are a clear demonstration of our real estate community's commitment to excellence. Our green building practitioners work hard every day to do what's right in our built environment. Together, we are ensuring net positive outcomes for the communities of our Commonwealth. I invite everyone to go ‘All In’ to celebrate these LEED achievements at Greenbuild Boston in November!”

 

Now in its seventh year, the ranking assesses the total square feet of LEED-certified space per resident based on U.S. Census data and includes commercial and institutional green building projects certified during 2016. The full ranking is as follows:


A few notable projects that certified in Massachusetts in 2016 include:  

Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, the location of Greenbuild 2017; LEED Silver

Plains Elementary School in South Hadley; LEED Silver

101 Seaport at Seaport Square in Boston; LEED Platinum – Nice work Chapter Sponsor, Skanska!

 

Collectively, 1,819 commercial and institutional projects achieved LEED certification within the Top 10 States for LEED in 2016, representing 309.12 gross square feet of real estate. Across the United States, 3,366 projects were certified in 2016, representing 470.39 million square feet.

  

The LEED green building certification system is the foremost program for the design, construction, maintenance and operations of green buildings. More than 59,000 commercial, neighborhood and residential projects are currently LEED certified, comprising more than 6 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states in the U.S. and in more than 164 countries and territories globally.  

 

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The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is committed to a prosperous and sustainable future through cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings. USGBC works toward its mission of market transformation through its LEED green building program, robust educational offerings, an international network of local community leaders, the annual Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, the Center for Green Schools and advocacy in support of public policy that encourages and enables green buildings and communities. For more information, visit usgbc.org and connect on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Are Students the Future of Smart Cities?

By Alexander Landa


It really shouldn't be a surprise when someone says something along the lines of “students are the future.” After all, students are continuously learning, at the forefront of innovation, and have plenty of ambition to make a name for themselves. To facilitative perpetual growth, some universities are working to ensure that more individuals enter the smart city field, starting by offering a number of classes, degrees, and certifications to make it all happen.

For example, the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh's public policy degree has concentrations in topics such as energy systems, environmental policy, and healthy policy. Speaking of Pittsburgh, the city was named a finalist in the 2016 Smart City Challenge.

Ohio State University received a massive grant from the US Department of Transportation not long ago, and is now offering one of the first data-analytics undergraduate degrees. Arizona State University's School of Sustainability now allows a student to focus on technology and society, meaning we can get ahead of the curve with smart city development and research.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center has a two-year progressional post-grad program to further a person's existing work in smart cities. Across the pond, University College London offers an entire Master's devoted to Smart Cities and Urban Analytics.

There aren't a lot of degree offerings yet, but we're getting there. Schools of engineering, architecture, sustainability, and technology are all taking notice of this emerging trend of smart cities, and it's only a matter of time until we see more degrees popping up.

Our upcoming Building Tech Forum will shine the spotlight on organizations and companies that are doing good work for smart cities, and who will surely lead us to the future! Register by Thursday 1/26 to ensure Early Bird pricing.