Featured Tracks

The 2019 Getting to Zero Forum features a number of specialty tracks in its program.

Getting to Zero Carbon in California

This conference track provides a big-picture view of how California plans to decarbonize the building sector over the next 25 years. The sessions cover state policy directives on carbonization, grid impacts and issues, decarbonization challenges in key building types, and technologies needed to move the state toward a decarbonized future.

Policy and Legislative Drivers for Decarbonization in California
Building decarbonization is an emerging solution to address statewide greenhouse gas reduction goals. This session looks at key legislative, regulatory, and gubernatorial initiatives driving decarbonization in California, including the roles of state agencies involved.

Decarbonization and the Grid: Impacts and Issues
California’s decarbonization goals impact electric and gas infrastructure by increasing electric demand and reducing gas use, potentially increasing costs for utilities. As more all electric buildings emerge and the electric demand grows, utility operators are seeking to incentivize building load flexibility in order to support healthy grid operations, including aligning energy generation and building energy demand.

Decarbonizing the Existing Building Stock: Issues and Opportunities
A strong consensus has emerged around the concept that “new” construction is relatively easy and cost-effective to decarbonize. But what about existing buildings, most of which will still be in service 25 years from now? In sequence, this session will look at the challenges, opportunities, and nascent approaches for decarbonizing single family homes, multi-family residential buildings, and commercial buildings.

Technologies: What We Have, What We Need
Take stock of the current state of building technologies needed to drive decarbonization at scale. Presenters will share the latest developments in heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, induction cooking, renewable energy, and energy storage systems, and discuss the options for full electric kitchens and how equipment needs to differ in residential vs commercial kitchens.

Effective Policies for Cities and States to Get to Zero Energy and Carbon

This conference track highlights the work of local jurisdictions to achieve energy and carbon reduction goals. These sessions will present a variety of case studies and strategies to support energy code and policy advancement.

Policies on Embodied Carbon
Government policies to limit carbon emissions from the building sector have historically focused on energy use. However, energy-related operational carbon is only part of the total carbon emitted over a building’s lifecycle. Increasingly, governments are recognizing that they also have policy options to limit embodied carbon related to building materials and construction. These can take different forms, such as limiting emissions from specific high-impact materials, requiring whole building lifecycle analysis, or zero carbon certification that includes embodied carbon. A range of policy case studies will be presented, along with a discussion about the pros and cons of each approach.

Codifying Zero to Advance Zero Goals
Effective zero energy building design starts with an energy target, which coupled with codes have the potential to advance zero energy for both individual buildings and communities. Leading jurisdictions are already implementing energy targets to guide policy toward achieving their carbon and energy reduction goals. Denver, British Columbia, and a growing number of jurisdictions are setting long-term building performance goals for code stringency through 2030 and beyond.  This session will discuss the collaboration necessary to plan, create, and implement above code standards to transform the market.

Aligning Climate and Energy Policies to Expedite Zero
States and local governments actively developing energy code and policy approaches aimed at driving zero energy and/or zero carbon buildings face a range of challenges and contexts. To support the efforts, local organizations have formed coalitions to hold policy implementers accountable and activate community awareness about the benefits of zero energy. Presenters will share a process and examples of long-term strategies to achieve energy and carbon goals leveraging voluntary requirements, stretch codes, and mandatory codes in concert with other tools to prime the market to be code ready.

The Next Challenges in Electrification
Getting to zero leaders can go farther, faster, together to develop innovative, durable, and equitable policies and buildings that can address energy use in existing buildings. Attendees will get an update on the landscape of policy to address energy use and carbon emissions in existing buildings. Highlighted electric building case studies will highlight all-electric space and water heating systems, with both airside, waterside heat recovery, and show how we can maximize the potential for car charging to speed growth in electric vehicle market share.

Pathways to Grid-Integrated Buildings

As more and more distributed generation resources come online, buildings that interact well will the electricity grid will become an essential aspect of Getting to Zero. This track digs in on the considerations and opportunities for effective development of grid-enabled buildings.

GridOptimal: Connecting Electric Grid Needs with Building Opportunities to Stabilize and Decarbonize the Grid
The modern electric grid working to evolve as the historic grid infrastructure strains to handle the growing number of distributed energy resources and smart systems. Experts looking at ways to design buildings for grid-optimal performance are using modeling analysis that layers ever-shifting carbon intensity and grid demand over the hourly annual energy model in order to understand the actual time-based carbon emissions of a building. Learn about a new metric for GridOptimal Buildings that offers energy flexibility in buildings, which can be leveraged as a carbon reduction strategy. Presenters will show how GridOptimal was applied at Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) Headquarters to demonstrate both decarbonization and grid harmonization strategies into the building design.

Integrating Utility and Customer Needs: The Value of Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings
Climate change and the evolving demands on the electrical grid are creating opportunities for buildings and grid operators alike to benefit from reduced cost and a more reliability. Critical synergies are emerging between renewables, energy-storage, and passive strategies to take our buildings and our electrical grid into a decarbonized future while supporting resilience. This session will share industry-leading efforts to turn buildings into profitable, grid interactive, efficient resources. Presenters will discuss the importance of grid interactive, efficient buildings, the value based on findings from a recent analysis and emerging test bed efforts.

Building-Grid Harmonization and Decarbonization
Design teams are in a unique position to create buildings that improve grid operations. Attending to issues of time of energy use and peak demands will help create smart, flexible, grid-connected buildings can be an asset both in net energy reduction and peak demand management. This session will examine the steps of reducing consumption, siting renewable energy resources, and creating grid enabled buildings that go beyond building efficiency and provide the flexibility needed to help reduce grid cost and increase the reliability, resiliency, and efficiency of the electric grid.

Energy Storage Opportunities
Recent academic research and the assessment of a California energy storage incentive program have shown that behind-the-meter energy storage can cause emissions due to a mismatch of electric grid dynamics, building load profiles, and rate structures. However, emissions increases can be eliminated through careful energy storage control strategies. Attendees will hear how district-scale photovoltaics and battery banks can be implemented, optimizing system capacities and battery control strategies to maximize potential savings in first costs, annual utility costs, peak demand charges, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Materials Choices that Reduce the Embodied Carbon Footprint

Energy-related operational carbon is only part of the total carbon emitted over a building’s lifecycle. Increasingly, policymakers and design teams are recognizing effective options to limit embodied carbon related to building materials and construction practices.

Policies on Embodied Carbon
Government policies to limit carbon emissions from the building sector have historically focused on energy use. However, energy-related operational carbon is only part of the total carbon emitted over a building’s lifecycle. Increasingly, governments are recognizing that they also have policy options to limit embodied carbon related to building materials and construction. These can take different forms, such as limiting emissions from specific high-impact materials, requiring whole building lifecycle analysis, or zero carbon certification that includes embodied carbon. A range of policy case studies will be presented, along with a discussion about the pros and cons of each approach.

Tackling Deep Carbon Reductions in Existing Buildings
Addressing the climate emergency requires innovative thinkers to transform buildings throughout its lifecycle.  Embodied carbon before construction, operational energy and carbon, and embodied carbon near end of life.  The combined effort of organizations addressing carbon reduction will support the zero carbon future.  This plenary will feature Katie Ross of Microsoft sharing innovations including a tool to select building products that reduce embodied carbon, Susan Kennedy of Advanced Microgrids looking at how AI can reduce building energy and carbon through algorithms, and Jasper van der Munckh of Energiesprong offering a program to breathe new energy efficiency into existing multifamily buildings, reducing the carbon.  When these ideas are combined throughout a buildings life, they offer serious solutions for carbon reduction.

A Global Call to Action for Zero Embodied Carbon
Getting to zero requires targeting both operating and embodied carbon. Buildings are responsible for 39% of global carbon emissions–28% attributed to operational carbon, and 11% to embodied emissions from materials and construction processes. As the industry responds to the challenge of eliminating operational carbon emissions from the energy consumption of buildings through design improvements, standards and regulations, embodied carbon becomes even more significant. This session will present a theory of change with case studies that aim to be zero embodied carbon discussing the feasibility of building density goals on embodied and operating carbon and explain the role that building reuse plays in achieving a zero carbon future.

Getting to Zero at the Community Scale: Charrette
No building is an island. Examining the built environment at a community scale allows for a more comprehensive evaluation of planning and design alternatives to reduce total carbon. This interactive session will present a fictitious medium-sized city’s downtown district consisting of several blocks of commercial and residential construction. The area must accommodate a set number of new jobs and households in order to meet the city’s future population and employment growth projections. Participants must determine where and how to add the new building capacity while attempting to reduce the total operational and embodied carbon of the district as close to zero as possible. The exercise’s goal is to highlight the importance of addressing energy usage in existing buildings and embodied carbon in new construction, and spur a discussion of tradeoffs between operational and embodied carbon at the community scale.