Sponsor Spotlight- AHA Consulting Engineers

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow

AHA Consulting Engineers is a silver-level sponsor of ours and USGBC national member. The group has been serving its clients for over 20 years across the country and internationally, with an expertise in mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection design as well as LEED administration, commissioning and energy modeling. With over 130 professionals, AHA is committed to the creation of environments of enduring quality and value.

Their work includes biotech/biopharm/R&D, civic/religious, corporate office, data centers, federal, state, and local government, healthcare, higher education, student housing, hospitality, manufacturing/industrial, and multi-family/residential/senior living building projects.  They also provide sustainability and energy conservation consultation. 


AHA was most recently tasked with designing the two Vertex Fan Pier towers constructed in Boston's Seaport district.  The two build-to-suit laboratory and office buildings total 1.1MSF, and construction costs total $800M.  Both buildings are seeking LEED Certification!

AHA provided MEP design for both the core and shell and fit outs for both buildings. Each building includes 16 stories of lab and office space with three levels of parking under both.  Specialized design was done for this high-level project that includes Vivariums, BSL-2 labs, Chemistry labs, MRI spaces, Radiology labs, Wet labs, and much more.

 

We're Hosting Educational Sessions at the NESEA BE16 Show!

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow


Thinking about attending the BuildingEnergy Boston Conference + Trade Show, March 8-10 at the Seaport World Trade Center? Attend our USGBC MA Chapter focused education sessions at the Pre-Conference Workshops on Tuesday before the main NESEA BE16 show!

We are presenting a couple of great sessions:

Hacking LEED v4: Innovation and Performance” at 10am-1pm

How will green building practitioners use the updated and mandated LEED v4 to raise the bar on energy & environmental performance in buildings? At the end of October 2016, the current LEED 2009 system will no longer accept new projects and all projects will be registering in v4. Will you be ready? What point and point complexes will help you through the new maze? How do pilot credits and innovation credits fit? Are you watching how legacy projects registered in v2009 are subject to changing requirements even now? Yes​!​ you have heard all about how LEED v4 is coming. Well, this year it's here and you will be using it. Learn from practitioners who are already waist-deep in the v4 waters.​ Hosted by MA USGBC​.

Building Blocks for Green Master Planning: A Hands-on Introduction to LEED ND” at 2pm-5pm

This engaging, hands-on workshop will give participants a “learning by doing” introduction to sustainable site planning principles and USGBC’s LEED for Neighborhood Development program. The workshop will begin with a short introduction. Then, using case studies developed from actual site designs, participants will complete a series of guided exercises in small teams to develop their own plans for these sites using wooden building blocks on top of the case study site plan. Teams will test development feasibility, do site design, and apply LEED ND credits to their plans. By comparing the workshop team designs and considering the actual plans, participants will explore the many ways that sustainable design principles can be applied to site planning. Teams will also gain experience with applying LEED ND prerequisites and credits to their site plans. This workshop is designed for participants of all skill levels—no prior design or planning experience needed.

Sign up through the links above, which will take you to the BE16 registration page. Then, show up and benefit from these excellent presentations!

A busy week indeed for solar energy, and still more work to be done!

By Anthony Lucivero, Advocacy Fellow


We have seen a flurry of solar energy activity in Massachusetts this past week. The Joint Rule 10 deadline of March 16th is fast approaching, which means all joint committees must report out the bills they have. Otherwise, the bills that remain unreported on will “die in committee” (you might have heard about this in our newsletter). If the joint committee in charge of net metering legislation does not report out the bills dealing with solar energy and net metering, the incredible progress we have made in Massachusetts for renewable energy will be lost. 

The USGBC MA Chapter has announced a “Call to Action” for our members (and anyone reading this!) to send a letter of support for net metering in Massachusetts. This includes: immediately raising the caps on net metering, funding a comprehensive and independent study on the value of solar energy in Massachusetts, supporting the democratization of solar through virtual net metering and community shared solar, and reform the SREC system. 

Please find your local legislator, and fill out this template letter with your information, and then send it via email to them! The chairs of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy also need to hear your voice, so please send a copy to them as well (Senator Benjamin B. Downing and Representative Thomas A. Golden, Jr.).

The fine folks at Nexamp, SEBANE, and CivicSolar are also sending letters to legislators. With your help, this will be an undeniable movement of support for net metering. 

Vote Solar, Sebane & CivicSolar are hosting a Solar Lobby Day next Tuesday, March 8th! Join in to show your support and make your voice heard!

Where and when:

Tuesday, March 8th at 9am, at the State House in front of the Governor's Office (Point A on this map)

Schedule:
9:00am: Meet in front of Governor's office
9:15: Group photo
9:20am: Distribute materials
9:30am – 3:00pm: Meetings with legislators
3:00pm: Rendezvous back at Governor's office

 

 

 

Our Building Tech Forum is April 21st, Save the Date!

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow

Building Tech:

Buildings are fundamentally about technology. Innovation in the building sector is driving improvements in performance and enhancements to the user experience.

Join us April 21st for this exciting investigation in to the intersection of buildings and innovative technology. 

Pathways to Involvement:

The Origins of the Event:

Building tech is the intersection of the innovation economy and real estate. The green building industry is right here in the middle of it – creating new ways to increase the value of real estate and improve the sustainability of our building stock and our communities in general. Buildings are responsible for 30% of greenhouse gases globally, and approximately 40% in the US. Recently, at the COP21 negotiations, the UN convened a “Buildings Day” to explore the ways the real estate sector can support improved environmental performance through better buildings. USGBC is committed to the creation of 5 billion square feet of certified green buildings in the next five years: this will require deployment of technology on a massive scale. The results will be better buildings, healthier occupants, more vibrant communities and a thriving industry connecting technology to real estate. 

 

We at the Massachusetts Chapter are here to champion that effort in our Commonwealth and we need to bring all the parties together.  You can read more about the ambitions of global leaders and recent agreements here. It is an exciting time to be a part of the high performance segment of the building industry!

Be involved with the Building Tech Forum 2016

Join us for the Building Tech Forum to connect on the local level to these important trends for sustainability in real estate.

We want you to come to our networking event to bring together practitioners in the green building sector – owners, builders, designers and operators – with innovators on the cutting edge of technological innovation.

Let's bring together the users and the providers who are are delivering the next solutions to the challenges of building design and facility management.

Who better to partner with for this interactive experience than Greentown Labs, the world's largest tech incubator, right here in Massachusetts.

Agenda:

5:30 – Orienting Remarks

6:00 – First Program begins; Keynote & Industry Observations

6:20 – First Program ends; games ensue

7:20 – Second Program begins: Panel

7:40 – Second Program ends

8:15 – Final Remarks and Appreciations

8:30 – End

At the Building Tech Forum you will:

  • meet people who will help you on your next high performance building project
  • encounter inspiring new technologies and solution strategies
  • hear from industry leaders about where things are going
  • connect your business to the innovations going on in the building sector

We look forward to having you with us!

  • High-quality colleagial interactions!
  • Food and drinks throughout the evening!
  • Special demonstrations and interactive challenges!

​The event will fill up quick, so register now!

For All Our Real Estate Pros– A Presentation on the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB)

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow


Join us for a presentation on the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) Survey; learn what it is, how it works and where it’s going.  This session will be presented by Laura Barnatt, of TA Realty, and our Existing Buildings Committee.  


The Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) was created in 2009 by a team of economists and statisticians from the Netherlands. Co-founded by Nils Kok at the University of Maastricht, GRESB was developed as a way for portfolio managers to more complexly assess real estate assets to uncover greater value for owners.

GRESB is a process of assessment which enables the multi-faceted aspects of property to be tracked over time in greater detail than has ever been done before. Through the GRESB process, an asset is rated in a new way, and the management entity is evaluated in a new way, which creates useful data about the underlying asset. With this data, and with the identification of component processes, asset managers can see into real estate and how non-financial aspects affect their financial performance.

The 2015 survey data highlights global trends and attempts to explain their impact on investors, GRESB survey participants, and the green building market. The 707 Participants–whose institutional capital represents $2.3 trillion of property value–have made many great strides in sustainability since 2014. The in-depth survey focuses on 7 thematic targets. This survey impressively revealed an average improvement from GRESB participants in each category:

Management: 96% have a specific person with responsibility for implementing sustainability objectives
Disclosure & Assurance: 92% report having specific sustainability objectives
Tenant & Community Engagement: 60% now have best-practice lease clauses 
Health and Well-Being: 84% increase in new construction measures to support health and well-being
Climate Risk & Resilience: -3.04% reduction in GHG emissions
Water & Waste: -1.65% decrease in water use
Energy: -2.87% reduction in energy consumption

Register for the event here!

The 2015 annual GRESB Survey includes seven aspects of sustainability spanning management policies to stakeholder engagement:


Buildings are for People: Design Strategies for Occupant Engagement Presinar

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow

About

In this one-hour course, the participant will explore design strategies that encourage beneficial occupant behavior. Consider the impacts occupant behavior changes can have on a building over its lifetime, dispel myths that key occupant behaviors cannot be directed by designers, and learn how these strategies can help achieve LEED certification.

Objectives

  1. Discuss how occupant behavior impacts a building’s environmental performance
  2. Identify design strategies that encourage beneficial occupant behavior in the areas of transportation, energy and water conservation, materials, and indoor environmental quality
  3. Explain how to target strategies by including representative occupants in the design process
  4. Describe how design strategies aimed at occupant behavior can help projects achieve LEED certification

Find out more and register here!

Chapman Construction: Not Your Typical Construction Firm

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow

Chapman is not your typical construction firm. It prioritizes sustainable construction management and consulting services. When it was founded in 1984, the firm's founders set out to create something new: a forward-looking company that was free from the traditional ideas about construction.

More than 30 years later, they're still pushing the envelope and expanding the definition of what a construction management firm can be: delivering work of the highest quality under the tightest of schedules, infusing every project with cost-conscious sustainable thinking, taking care of their employees and their families, and supporting the community focused organizations where they live and work. 


Chapman's commitment to sustainability is its guiding philosophy. Their hadquarters are certified LEED Platinum and their rooftop solar array (shown at right) generates more than 87% of their electricity! If you look closely, you can see their fleet of Priuses that are used to transport staff to jobsites. Not pictured is Chapman's high efficiency plumbing fixtures that have helped them cut their water consumption in half. 

Chapman infuses every project, large or small, with sustainable thinking and a host of standard green practices. All Chapman jobsites follow their indoor air quality program, ensuring a clean and healthy environment for occupants both during and after construction. They’ve also standardized on building materials that are high in recycled content and paints, sealants and adhesives that contain low or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Additionally, they designed a waste management plan to encourage salvage, reuse, and recycling. By implementing this plan across all jobsites, they’ve been able to divert an average of 79.6% of construction and demolition debris from landfills each year.

More than 50% of their staff have earned their LEED Accredited Professional designations, as have more than 200 of their industry partners. As USGBC and AIA Education Providers, Chapman offers classes and continuing education seminars for clients and partners who wish to maintain their accreditations or simply expand their knowledge of sustainable construction practices.

Read more about Chapman on their website

Marching Forward with More Green Buildings!

By Grey Lee


Below is the intro section of the March Prospect – our monthly forward-looking newsletter.

Link to the full edition here.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Gearing Up For a Busy March

Hello Force of Green-ness!
The first two months of 2016 have flown by for us here at USGBC MA, but we don't have time to stop and take a breath because we have a jam-packed and exciting schedule coming up with tons of events and opportunities in the next few months!

I was at a breakfast program this morning, run by another org, linking Sustainability & Property Management. There were great panels moderated by Chapter colleagues Mike Davis and Luka Matutinovic. It is fascinating to note how far our community of practitioners has come in the last 15 years. I remember pitching LEED in about 2003 and developers and owners just could not get their heads around it. Now, we see developers talking about how they only build out LEED space for their commercial projects; how they report in to GRESB because their big money investors like J.P. Morgan want to know; how high-end apartment developers are incorporating sustainability and wellness into their projects because their residents (and not just millennials!) are asking for these features. It is an exciting time – and yet – many projects forego a systematic approach to sustainability and leave money on the table.

It's sometimes unbelievable that we still have so much work to do, but it's awesome that in the global struggle to put an end to wasteful buildings, we are winning! Thanks for participating in this mission and marching together as a community for improved ROI and improved sustainability in our communities. 

On that note, we have a CALL FOR ACTION to support our Advocacy priorities. We are approaching a critical deadline to support Net Metering legislation. We need your help to secure a renewable energy future for the Commonwealth. Please click here to see more in the Advocacy Update.

We have big events coming up: our COP21 Buildings Day Unconference on 3/29; The Building Tech Forum on 4/21/16 and a Resilience Expo in July. Let me know if you like the subjects and want to be involved.

Next week we have two big gatherings for our green building pros: NESEA's “BuildingEnergy16” in the Seaport of Boston. If you need a deep dive on LEED v4 or to explore LEED ND – sessions are Tuesday, 3/8, for your educational needs. Also, hosted by our sponsoring partner National Grid, the Association of Energy Engineers' “GLOBALCON” in Boston's Back Bay.

I hope to see you at one of these upcoming events. It is always good to re-connect with comrades on the trail to More Green Buildings!

Thank you,
Grey, and Celis, Anthony, Ryan and Wenbin

PS: who knows from what ancient military redoubt the above picture was taken?

 

Read the full newsletter here.

USGBCMA Educational Opportunity: Hacking LEED: v4 Innovation and Performance

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow

Register now for Hacking LEED: v4 Innovation and Performance on Tuesday, March 8, 2016, from 10:00am to 1:00pm! 

Attend USGBC MA Chapter focused education sessions at the Pre-Conference Workshops on Tuesday before the main NESEA BE16 Show.

Hosted by the USGBC MA Chapter, this course will cover how to use the updated and mandated LEED v4 to raise the bar on energy & environmental performance in buildings, how to transition from the current LEED 2009 system to the LEED v4, how pilot credits and innovation credits fit in, and how legacy projects registered in v2009 are subject to changing requirements even now.  This year, LEED v4 is here and you'll be using it, so learn from practitioners who are already waist-deep in the v4 waters.   

Register here!

Only a week until the event, hope to see you all there!


From National: District thinking and doing: A path to net zero

By Tom Marseille


A net zero energy goal is becoming increasingly realistic, given current and emerging building technologies and design approaches. But even with a well-charted and proven road map, the majority of projects face inherent building constraints that hinder an aggressive pursuit of net zero at scale.  

Finding the right place

Often, the limiting factor to net zero is that the building or building site becomes an unnecessary boundary. Buildings with high energy or water use intensity (e.g., hospitals or data centers), as well as high-rises that lack sufficient space for onsite renewable energy or rainwater collection, are generally identified as poor candidates. In urban areas, projects may not be able to annualize net zero energy production at the meter if utility network grids cannot safely accept back-fed energy generated onsite.

Climate, too, can affect a project’s candidacy. Highly efficient air- or ground-source heat pumps may not be the most feasible for buildings in cold locations with a significant annual need for heat (which can result in reliance on onsite fossil fuel combustion or electric resistance heat.) Even low-rise office buildings in moderate climates tend to be densely populated—meaning higher internal energy loads.

The district solution

Although it's not new, the idea of an energy district for heating and/or cooling is a strategy increasingly being considered as a path to net zero. Depending on fuel source, a district heating system, while not necessarily energy resource-efficient, could provide a significant advantage in reducing the carbon footprint of those buildings served, even if it paradoxically doesn’t necessarily help the net zero energy equation for those same buildings. Traditionally, college or corporate campuses and some cities have installed centralized utility plants to produce district steam for heating and chilled water for cooling, primarily for economic reasons.

Fortunately, new district paradigms are emerging that are practical and achievable, and far more localized. The concept of heat sharing—harvesting neighboring energy resources that would otherwise be wasted—is one such opportunity, and can enable the step change needed to achieve high performance outcomes. 

Converting waste to energy

Amazon’s Seattle headquarters is one recent example of a local energy district based on synergy within an urban environment. The new building receives heat via water piping that’s interconnected with a large data center across the street. This heat is a natural byproduct of the data center’s server farms and was previously expelled year-round through cooling towers on the building’s roof (consuming more energy and water.) Amazon took on this waste heat, engaging a third party to enable the neighbor-to-neighbor transaction. The headquarters design includes a central plant equipped with pumps that take the low-grade heat byproduct and boost it to temperatures suitable for building heating. As Amazon intends to fully harvest this resource to heat the entire campus, the design weaves multiple buildings together—and will ultimately provide heat for over 3.3 million square feet of space.

A similar example is being developed in the design of a future sports arena in Seattle. In this case, thanks in part to active encouragement and support from local authorities and utilities, the owners are looking to leverage heat from an adjacent county sewer/storm main. Systems designed to harvest heat from sewage are now available on the market and provide a unique opportunity to use what would otherwise be a wasted resource. Also, because excess heat generated by the arena could empty into the sewage stream, the project does not require a cooling tower—saving energy and water, and eliminating the need for additional onsite equipment.

Although there are challenges in harvesting what is otherwise viewed as waste beyond a project’s traditional boundaries, some creativity, applied locally, can bring great results. Success requires the right technical opportunity; the right political climate; and a motivated, cooperative group of stakeholders who can make decisions in the context of projects where upfront dollars are precious and schedules are tight.