Page 6 - Zero Net Energy Case Study Buildings-Volume 2

ZERO NET ENERGY CASE STUDY BUILDINGS, VOL. 2 FOREWORD
Foreword
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Upon completing Volume 2 of these Zero Net Energy (ZNE) case studies, it’s interesting to reflect upon how the market for ZNE has progressed in the 18 months or so since we published Volume 1 in late 2014. The changes have been significant and widespread across multiple areas.
New Policy Initiatives. Just since 2014, we’ve seen many new policy initiatives at federal, state and local levels that address high performance buildings and ZNE and their important roles in greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. President Obama issued Executive Order 13693, Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade, in March, 2015: by 2030, it calls for new federal building construction above 5,000 square feet to be “designed to achieve energy net zero” and for significantly higher levels of energy efficiency in existing federal buildings.
Although ZNE policy initiatives in California were explicitly stated as early as 2008 (see the CPUC’s Long Term Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan), Governor Brown, in his inaugural ad- dress in early 2015, raised the bar: he called out aggressive new targets for much higher levels of grid-scale renewable generation together with much higher levels of energy efficiency in all buildings. These proclamations were quickly followed with legislation: SB 350 was signed in October, 2015, codifying the vision and setting specific targets for renewables (up from 33% to 50% by 2030) and building energy efficiency (a “doubling” of efficiency levels).
We have seen other states, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, establish state-level ZNE initiatives. As of this writing in the Spring, 2016, at least 18 cities across the country have established ZNE districts1. Consideration of ZNE is becoming an accepted tenet of building- scale and development-scale planning across the country.
Perceived Cost. A second big change recently is around the perceived cost of ZNE. It’s higher, right? Not necessarily. Today, rapidly growing numbers of designers are finding ways to achieve ZNE within typical construction budgets for a given building type in a given location. Just as technical feasibility for ZNE in new construction is now generally accepted for the majority of the building stock going forward—not the case just five years ago—we believe that perceptions around cost issues are changing, too. While certain types of high-performance building features do cost more, it is becoming clear that certain higher-cost features can be mostly or fully offset by lower-cost features: for example, a high-performance building shell (more expensive) can reduce the size and capacity of space cooling equipment (less expensive). In other cases, a developer may choose to include premium building performance features at added cost, but may do so deliberately to attract and satisfy a particular type of market demand such that the added cost is an “investment” is fully recovered (and then some) in the form of rent premiums, faster market uptake and reduced vacancy (see Case Study No. 9 in this volume, Speculative Office Building at 435 Indio Way).
It will be interesting to revisit these related issues around ZNE cost and ZNE value in the coming years. Our bet is that high performance means high value.
Retrofit Feasibility. Third, we note growing interest in retrofitting existing buildings to ZNE. Not long ago, such projects were thought to be extremely difficult-to-impossible in most cases, and that they would never pencil out financially for those who did pursue them. Yet we note that four of the five buildings in this Volume 2 are in fact ZNE retrofits (and five of the eleven buildings in the two volumes combined).
To be sure, there are real feasibility issues with ZNE retrofits and no one claims all buildings can be retrofit to this level. Still, recalling that ZNE is fundamentally a greenhouse gas (GHG)
1 See http://newbuildings.org/sites/default/files/2014_Getting_to_Zero_Update.pdf
Zero Net Energy Case Study Buildings: Volume 2