Decarbonize Existing Buildings Alliance: August 2024

The August Decarbonize Existing Buildings Alliance roundtable sparked an engaging conversation centered around what lessons have been learned from the decarbonization planning that has been done and is currently underway. Community chair, Ilene Mason, Founder and CEO at RPM, facilitated the conversation by giving a brief overview of some of the key takeaways, including how much broader the scope is than anticipated, important things to consider about how the planning process occurs, and what is being learned from deep energy retrofits.

Subject matter experts Eri Furusawa, Director at HR&A, and Dennis Carlberg, Chief Sustainability Officer and Associate Vice President for Climate Action at Boston University, shared their experiences with decarbonization and answered questions from participants. Additionally, attendees were invited to raise hands, use the chat and/or a Miro board in order to share their thoughts and answer questions allowing for every participant to feel comfortable collaborating.

Main Themes Discussed

Building Upgrades and Decarbonization
Eri Furusawa kicked off the first section of the discussion by sharing her experiences from a real estate and economic development consulting firm, where they often work with a variety of different clients, including real estate owners, universities, and community development organizations. She shared there are both financial and operational barriers from a building owner’s perspective to pursuing building upgrade projects, and there is usually a “trigger event” that leads to this upgrade, where something important is no longer able to function and leaves the owner with no choice but to replace it. However, for many of these building owners, decarbonization is not the focus – operating a building is. Alternatively, from a tenants perspective, building upgrades typically deliver benefits though they do also have the potential to cause disruption and trigger rent increases.

Customer Journey
Eri goes on to give an example of what the customer journey would look like for a multifamily property owner, after a trigger event occurs.

• Step one in this process is project consideration, where it is determined whether to develop a detailed scope of work and make a cost estimate, focusing on whether it will improve comfort and health concerns. The decision makers at this step are the owner and team working with the owner, though there are other influences, such as the tenants of the building that go into the ultimate decision.
• Step two is scoping and evaluation, these are not just engineering considerations but are also related to policy work and the tenant’s comfort. In the end, this step aims to determine whether the upgrade plan is ready to advance to lenders and funders.
•. Step three is bidding and finance, focusing on navigating incentives, eligibility, coverage, and timeline. At this step, the team will hopefully secure an effective funding package to start construction.
• Step four is inspection and installation, where a number of questions are considered around labor, workforce development, equity, if there are enough contractors that are able to do this work, and mitigating risks. Now it’s time to focus on the construction timeline and make sure the upgrades are completed on schedule.
• Finally, the last step is completion and commissioning, with the goal of receiving incentives.

Eri finished by explaining that there are many conversations with different journeys, and this is just one of many examples of what the process could look like. Decarbonization is not something done without incentive, and it is much more common to see existing buildings being updated after older technology fails to work, if it is seen as a viable option to property owners.

Campus Decarbonization at Boston University
Next, Dennis Carlberg moved on to discuss campus decarbonization planning at Boston University. In 2017, BU’s Board of Trustees approved a Climate Action Plan which has one important goal of reaching net zero direct emissions by 2040. The university has done a number of things in order to reduce carbon emissions since 2017, including grid electrification, geothermal use instead of fossil fuels, and matching 100% of electricity with renewables, through BU Wind. Through these efforts, emissions have been reduced by 65% so far. However, since 2017, there have been a number of changes to the University, in both emissions and space – one being the addition of the Center for Computing and Data Sciences. Dennis shared challenges with planning and installing the building’s geothermal system including verticality and space constraints of the 1500 ft bore holes for the closed loop geothermal system and the construction schedule. The high-performance building is running better than anyone anticipated and will continue to be monitored. The project also shone a light on the opportunity to share a thermal loop among neighboring buildings and planning for expansion of the geothermal system over time, instead of having it focused on one building alone.

Existing Building Decarbonization on Campus
The focus switched to address existing buildings on campus and the efforts to decarbonize them. There are planned major renovations that focus on air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps, and a phased district system approach. A concept study for proactive decarbonization has a pilot phase, including 3 buildings, a phase 1, including 13 buildings, and aims for 80-90% decarbonization to reduce emissions more quickly. This concept would start with newer buildings, as they have high performance envelopes and low temperature hot water, making them significantly easier to to renovate and will make more impact on campus in a shorter period of time. While there are some issues with addressing space on an urban campus, the large diverse portfolio of buildings BU owns and operates, capital and operational costs, and grid capacity, there are also a number of opportunities that could come out of this. These include updating and reaching goals laid out in the Climate Action Plan, the Investment Reduction Act, utility incentives, and BERDO guidelines.

Key Questions and Answers
One participant asked Dennis, “how are you applying what you learned from the data center to other buildings in terms of geothermal?” In his response, Dennis explained that while it is a daunting task, at least with the Center for Computing and Data Science there was an alleyway behind the building that allowed for space for most of the wells, and BU owned all the property around so finding additional space wasn’t too much of a problem. Due to the space being dense, it was important to consider digging to a 1500 ft depth, as opposed to a cheaper and quicker U-bend system. However, because so many of the buildings the university owns are in such close proximity to each other, there’s the possibility for them to share thermal load.

Ilene went on to ask “how are you seeing people navigate changes in utility bills and utility costs?” Eri replied saying that this is an area of active discussion right now, and it’s difficult on many levels because it’s hard to know what the actual translation of living as a tenant is to how much less or how much more gas or electricity you’re using. This translation is also really difficult to predict on the financial side.

This roundtable provided clear insight into our two subject matter experts’ experiences with decarbonizing existing buildings, and allows us to consider the different perspectives that go into the decision to make a building more efficient. Additionally, understanding how leaders in the decarbonization field have made their decisions and learned from their own projects are key takeaways that can contribute to how to effectively reduce carbon.