2007 Symposium - Abstracts
Hon. Susan Roaf, Oxford City Council, Oxford, England
“Addressing Climate Change through Innovative Urban Master Planning – the Oxford Experience”
We all know that the world is changing fast and four events in particular really have really made us sit up and think about the future.
- The first was the effect of the European Heatwave of July 2003 that killed over 35,000 people, 15,000 alone lived in France , mainly the vulnerable and elderly, many living on the top floors of blocks with un-insinuated metal roofs.
- The second event happened a month later with the August 2003 power failure that affected over 50 million people in the Eastern Seaboard of the States. Again these buildings had failed to provide adequate shelter against ‘events’.
- The third event that shocked the world was the day the levees breached in New Orleans and here it was the city that failed to protect its people. ,
- The Fourth has been the rise and rise of oil and gas prices around the world, heralding that the fact that we are already over ‘Peak Oil’, we are simply, as a planet, beginning to run out of oil and gas.
In the this talk Sue Roaf will outline a range of building and climate related risks that individuals may be facing in the future and then present a range of actions that homeowners and legislators can begin to take to future-proof lifestyles in the building and cities around the world against the predictable and growing challenges of the 21st century. At the heart of the solutions available is the concept of Low Carbon Buildings and the talk will define what these are and how we can help them to happen.
Prof. Alan Plattus, Yale School of Architecture and Director of Urban Design Workshop, Yale University, New Haven, CT
"3 Kinds of Sustainable Community Design"
“This talk will cover the three inter-related levels of real sustainability necessary for healthy communities: 1) environmental and public health sustainability (the level on which there is currently the greatest focus); 2) economic and social sustainability (without which none of this works in a market economy); and 3) what I call civic sustainability—the making of places which create, nurture, and sustain community identity and investment over time.”
Jerald Schnoor, Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa
“The WATERS Network: Transforming Environmental Engineering and Hydrologic Science Research through an Integrated Environmental Observing Network”
“Water is a vital resource for our society that is increasingly stressed by multiple demands of water supply, agriculture, industry, recreation, and ecosystem needs. Traditionally, water has been managed in a fragmented manner—for example, groundwater is treated separately from surface water, and standards for effluent discharge are often disconnected from quality required at downstream water intakes. Development of integrated management of water resources has been frequently stated as a goal, but knowledge gaps make this difficult to achieve. The Water and Environmental Research Systems (WATERS) Network, which is funded by the National Science Foundation Engineering and Geosciences Directorates, will provide an opportunity to advance our understanding of water as an integrated resource by addressing the following societal needs:
- Our nation’s waters continue to have serious pollution problems, and new knowledge and solutions are needed to address them.
- The frequency and impacts of floods and water shortages must be reduced.
- U.S. students and citizens need to be engaged in helping to solve these water problems.
The WATERS Network will be an integrated real-time distributed observing system that will enable academic and government scientists, engineers, educators, and practitioners to advance effective management of our nation’s water resources through the understanding of human interactions with water and the natural and built environment. It will transform our understanding of the Earth’s water and related biogeochemical cycles across multiple spatial and temporal scales to enable forecasting and management of critical water processes affected by human activities. This presentation will summarize the overarching goals and science vision for the Network, including the justification for a national network. It will also discuss the conceptual design strategy for the overall network infrastructure and proposed experimental facilities and outline the proposed timeline for design and construction.
John Ward, CSIRO Energy Technology, New Castle, Australia
“Outside the Box- HVAC management techniques that consider the world around them”
Intelligent HVAC management addresses the trichotomy of HVAC design –
• Reducing the impact on the electricity network (demand management);
• Reducing the environmental impact (particularly CO2 emissions); and
• Achieving thermal comfort for building occupants.
This presentation summarizes CSIRO’s research on intelligent HVAC management techniques, with a particular focus on their applicability to participation in demand management programs. Such programs are of significant interest, seen as a way of reducing expenditure and minimizing energy consumption in electricity systems around the world. CSIRO is developing intelligent HVAC control methods that enable automated participation in energy demand management programs, benefiting both the local system owner as well as the electricity business - whilst still considering factors such as occupant comfort.
Recent investigations into the application of machine learning techniques and the use of wireless sensor networks will be discussed, together with recent trial results carried out in a multi-story building HVAC deployment.
Toshiko Mori, Toshiko Mori Architects, New York, NY and Professor and Chair, Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
“Sustainability Innovations in the Headquarters for the Syracuse Center of Excellence”
Volker Hartkopf, Professor of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
“Building as Power Plant: A vision for sustainable energy systems integrated with building infrastructure”
“The Building as Power Plant (BAPP) initiative by the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University seeks to integrate advanced energy-efficient building technologies (ascending strategies) with innovative distributed energy generation systems (cascading strategies), such that most or all of the building’s energy needs for heating, cooling, ventilating, and lighting are met on-site, under the premise of fulfilling all requirements concerning user comfort and control. This will be pursued by integrating a ‘passive approach’ with the use of renewable energies. Conceptually, the new building is seen as a continuation and further development of the Robert L. Preger “Intelligent Workplace”—a living laboratory for research and demonstration of high performance workplaces. It is intended that this research and demonstration will serve as a step towards broader implementation of the building as power generator in industry and government.
In this initiative we particularly emphasize the systems integration aspect, in order to reduce first costs, increase efficiency and performance, and maximize the return on investment. We believe that the use of innovative and sustainable energy systems for buildings will be technologically and economically feasible only if buildings are inherently “intelligent” in that they minimize their energy needs to start with. The project will demonstrate Plug-and-Play Technologies to meet the following objectives:
• Individual Comfort and Productivity
• Organizational Flexibility
• Technological Adaptability
• Energy and Environmental Effectiveness
BAPP is designed as a six-story extension of the existing Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall Building with total area of 64,175 square feet, which houses classrooms, studios, laboratories, and administrative offices for the College of Fine Arts. It is our intention to develop a building which will be equipped with a decentralized energy generation system in the form of a combined heat and power plant. This will include a 250 kW Siemens Westinghouse Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) and absorption chiller/boiler technologies. In addition, advanced photovoltaic, solar thermal, and geo-thermal systems will be considered for integration.”
W. Dan Turner, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of Energy Systems Laboratory, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
“Metering, Optimization, and Continuous Commissioning”
The energy efficiency program over the past ten years at Texas A&M University will be featured. The University embarked on a large-scale building and utility metering program with the Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL) in 1995 and the ELS began the optimization of the building HVAC and controls systems in 1996. The Continuous Commissioning® process has been on going now for over 10 years, and the campus energy intensity (energy/square foot/year) has decreased more than 30% during this period. Avoided utility costs to date, in actual dollars, exceed $50 million.
Edward Arens, Professor, Graduate School of Architecture and Director of Center for Environmental Design Research, University of California, Berkeley, CA
“Assessment of the Indoor Environment: Learning from Buildings”
“There are many types of building environment assessment. The following is a list people who may use them and for what purposes:
• Researchers: Developing indoor environmental standards, and design guidance
• Designers: Obtaining feedback about designs and use of technology
• Building owners: Evaluating quality of buildings and their maintenance staff
• Building operators: Operating setpoints; diagnosing causes of failures and complaints
• Commissioning agents: Obtaining feedback during HVAC system calibration
• Employers: Maintaining employees’ satisfaction and productivity
• Occupants: Managing their environmental control costs
At Berkeley we have been using a variety of assessment techniques to address each of these functions. I will describe these and touch on several research results that were derived from performing using these techniques, each having energy conservation implications. In general, our focus is on comfort and energy, rather than on air quality and health.”
Norm Bourassa, Efficiency Standards Office, California Energy Commission, Sacramento, CA
“California Public Interest Energy Research for Buildings - Finding multiple pathways to the market”
“In 1996, as part of California's utility regulation restructuring the Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program was created under California Energy Commission administration. The Buildings End-Use Energy Efficiency program is one of eight PIER program targeting specific energy end-use and energy distribution issues. During its 10-year existence, the PIER Buildings program has identified multiple paths to the market for PIER products. This presentation will provide brief case studies of successful PIER Buildings products and their market implementation stories.”
Timothy Wagner, Principal Research Engineer, United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT
“CHP—An Innovation to Reduce Building Energy and Carbon Footprint”
The Department of Energy has identified Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems as a critical part of the U.S. energy strategy for achieving current and future energy and environmental goals. These systems provide improved fuel utilization efficiency and lower emissions when compared to central power plant generation and standard distribution and transmission. The challenge to successful design of CHP systems is the effective utilization of the thermal energy from the prime mover. This presentation will describe several innovations that have advanced the state of the art in Combined Heat and Power systems, including the development of pre-engineered CHP systems, the optimization of commercially available absorption chillers for integration with microturbine prime movers, and the development of an absorption chiller for integration with a reciprocating engine. Real world examples of the application of the technology at the Ronald Reagan Library, a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and an A&P Supermarket will be presented.