Page 6 - Designing for Zero Carbon - Case Studies of All-Electric Buildings

DESIGNING FOR ZERO CARBON FOREWORD
Foreword
California is a world leader on environmental policy, particularly energy and climate policy. In the late 70s, the Warren Alquist Act was signed into law, creating the California Energy Commission (CEC) as the state’s primary energy policy and planning agency, of which I am currently the Chair. The first paragraph of the act reads:
“...a principal goal of electric and natural gas utilities’ resource planning and investment shall be to minimize the cost to society of the reliable energy services that are provided by natural gas and electricity, and to improve the environment and to encourage the di- versity of energy sources through improvements in energy efficiency and development of renewable energy resources, such as wind, solar, and geothermal energy.”
Addressing this goal not only forms the foundation of developing energy efficiency standards for the built environment, but also the rationale to address the environmental and social costs presented by the climate crisis. To reach this aspiration, buildings must be both efficient and able to access reliable and renewable energy.
In the CEC’s 2018 Integrated Energy Policy Report, electrification of building end uses emerged as a key pathway to achieving the state’s goals, and subsequent reports and analyses have continued to support that pathway. The underlying strategy is to construct a reliable, affordable, carbon free electric grid and use that energy in substitution of fossil fuels. SB 100 (De León, 2018) sets a policy to achieve this grid of the future, and several statutes and policies have subsequently been passed to support building decarbonization including SB 1477 (Stern, 2018), AB 3232 (Friedman, 2018), SB 68 (Becker, 2021), and the Budget Act of 2021 (SB 170, Skinner, 2021, chapter 240).
In essence, the core strategy of building decarbonization is to reduce energy demand, increase flexibility of remaining demand, and then supply energy with carbon free resources. Electric heat pumps are a foundational technology to this approach as they can be triple the efficiency of conventional technologies while taking advantage of potentially abundant clean electricity. While heat pumps have nearly all the market share for key building cooling equipment such as refrig- erators and air conditioners, they have only a fraction of the market for key heating equipment for space and water heating. Builders consequently have less experience using these technologies. Incorporation of the latest innovative technologies and techniques presents both the challenge of inexperience and an opportunity to reduce cost, improve performance, and improve the health of occupants.
The climate crisis requires swift action and unprecedented market transformation. It is therefore critical to accelerate knowledge transfer and best practices in building design and implementa- tion. This volume, Designing for Zero Carbon, is part of this important effort and showcases well those buildings and designs in the vanguard of change with trends that will ultimately become standard building practices.
—David Hochschild, Chair, California Energy Commission
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Designing for Zero Carbon: Volume 1