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by Brian
Gitt
Recent legislative and regulatory initiatives on federal, state, and local
levels have combined to create an unprecedented opportunity to green
existing buildings in California. The following initiatives are reshaping
the future of the built environment in California:
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AB32
and its Scoping Plan are providing dramatic new statewide goals for
energy savings and greenhouse gas reduction;
-
The
California Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan, the Public Utility
Commission's (PUC's) more specific sectoral objectives in support of
AB32;
-
AB811,
the new law permitting all California municipalities to establish
special assessment districts for energy efficiency and solar loan
programs;
-
The new
federal economic stimulus package
, including energy-specific funding to
cities and states, as well as new funds for green workforce training;
-
The
innovative "home performance contracting" utility funding programs now
being authorized for 2009-11 by the PUC in collaboration with the
Environmental Protection Agency's
Energy Star program;
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The new
Home Energy Rating System (HERS) II regulations for home energy ratings
and improvement standards approved by the California Energy Commission
(CEC);
-
Local
government CO2 reduction goals and programs emerging as part
of their state-mandated Climate Action Plans.
These
initiatives create new pathways to large-scale comprehensive retrofit and
solar programs, which will greatly reduce energy and water use (with high
benefits to building owners), supply readily available financing, and aid
economic recovery through the creation of thousands of jobs in California.
With collaboration among local jurisdictions for maximum value, special
voluntary assessment districts can now be formed to provide affordable
financing for solar and efficiency upgrades. Existing utility programs
that train contractors for comprehensive home upgrades can be expanded
with available workforce development grants.
The CEC's HERS II regulations, Energy Star branding and utility funding
can support high standards and broad public acceptance. Combining these
elements into a new model for cities and counties to achieve high energy
and water savings, renewable power production, and other benefits to their
constituents will maximize the overall effectiveness of these efforts.
Why focus on existing buildings?
California's 13.2 million existing housing units, which will dominate
the built environment in the state for this century, hold great potential
for major carbon reductions through energy and water savings. Per
California's AB32 carbon reduction mandate, housing must contribute one of
the largest shares of carbon savings. The California PUC's Energy
Efficiency Strategic Plan, supporting AB32, sets goals of 40 percent
energy savings in all homes within 12 years and 80 percent by
2050-requiring annual improvement rates many times current levels. Local
governments throughout the state are committing to aggressive climate
change policies and plans, which require swift and bold action.
Finally, with the financial services and housing industries in freefall,
and with the glut of homes on the market, new construction will play an
even smaller role than it has in the past. Therefore, the existing housing
stock is where action must be taken to achieve energy efficiency measures
in support of climate action plans.
Role of Government
Local and state government are on the front lines in tackling climate
change. At a time when deficits have never felt so daunting, governments
at all levels are either staking their claim as green champions or are
being pushed forward by the threat of lawsuits. Due to their control over
local land use and direct relationship with building owners, local
governments have an important role to play. However, there are significant
barriers and challenges to successfully transforming existing buildings.
Policy: There is a lack of effective state and local government
retrofit-triggering mechanisms and incentives that can influence the
performance of the existing housing stock. In addition, existing
regulatory barriers such as the CPUC's limited cost-effectiveness
definition do not recognize all consumer and societal benefits. The result
is an inefficient emphasis on individual retrofit measures, instead of a
comprehensive "whole house" approach that can deliver much greater energy
savings, health and comfort benefits, and much higher consumer
satisfaction.
Technical Difficulties: The existing building stock is extremely
fragmented and often requires complex and costly comprehensive solutions.
A scalable program model is difficult to achieve because homes have
different deficiencies based on factors such as vintage/age, building
type, location, climate zone, modifications made, energy usage patterns,
and energy bills.
Consumer Barriers: Aside from consumers' knowledge of savings on utility
bills, there is widespread lack of awareness of the additional benefits
associated with green retrofits.
Financing: Low cost financing has not been widely available for green
retrofits and is tied to the homeowner rather than the property.
Conventional financial instruments are not in step with loan payback
timeframe due to society's high mobility (e.g., average resident moves
every eight years).
Workforce Infrastructure: Significant gaps in knowledge, skills, and
experience in the workforce limit scale and success of green retrofit
programs.
Delivery Mechanisms: Fragmented program design and implementation due
to lack of coordination between existing low, moderate, and upper income
programs and initiatives-now funded primarily by utility incentive
programs-result in missed opportunities to leverage all available
resources and maximize benefits.
Research Limitations: Lack of adequate research data (e.g.,
characterization of built environment and associated social environment,
costs vs. benefit studies, etc.) to analyze market demand, which is
essential to inform successful program design and implementation
strategies.
To overcome these barriers and achieve the aggressive greenhouse gas,
energy, and water goals already in place, we will need to develop and
adopt new comprehensive and integrated program models that account for the
realities of the physical infrastructure, leverage government policy,
build business capacity, and raise consumer awareness.
Physical Infrastructure
The first important step is to analyze local market potential to
inform program design and implementation strategies. A "whole
neighborhood" approach is a crucial element of the program's strategy for
attaining large-scale results. Detailed analysis of the built environment
and social environment is necessary to find and serve neighborhoods that
can most productively accelerate the program.
Analysis of available data associated with the existing building stock may
include neighborhood vintage/age, building type, climate zone, size (sq.
ft.), energy usage, and utility rates. Social characteristics including
income, household size, cultural attributes, community capacity and
political support must be considered along with the built environment
data. The building stock can then be categorized based on the research
results. Modeling and testing of sample building units in each category
can be performed to support the development of basic retrofit packages
tailored for each category of building.
Local Government Policy
Local governments will need to use a combination of carrots and sticks
at different phases of implementation. Mello-Roos Community Finance
Districts and AB811 assessment districts can be the foundation of a
voluntary program that allows property owners to install solar and energy
efficiency projects with little upfront cost. The property owners' costs
are repaid on property tax bills over 20 years. Other tools such as HERS
II audits ("miles per gallon" sticker), time of sale retrofit
requirements, or mandatory retrofit requirements by date certain will all
be options for local governments.
Business Capacity
To bridge the significant gaps in knowledge, skills, and experience in
the workforce today, comprehensive training and mentoring programs are
already being created. These must be scaled up quickly to build a robust
green workforce capable of greening California's existing building stock.
Marketing and Outreach
Lack of consumer awareness remains one of the biggest challenges.
Developing high-impact targeted marketing and outreach strategies to
educate consumers and building owners on the health, comfort, and
financial benefits of green improvements is essential.
These strategies, if sequenced and coordinated correctly, will create the
opportunities necessary to achieve the deep energy and water reductions
needed.
Brian Gitt is a Principal at BKi, a leading energy efficiency and green
building consulting firm in Oakland, California. He will be presenting in
a pre-conference session at the Green California Summit in the workshop:
AB 32 Tool Kit for Local Government.
Brian is actively working with local governments, utilities, state
agencies, and other building industry stakeholders to develop
comprehensive existing home policies and programs.
You can
contact him directly at
brian@bki.com.
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