Multifamily Passive House new construction can be built today for low incremental cost and dramatic energy reduction. Join us for a review of eight affordable passive house projects, demonstrating that Passive House buildings in the Northeast are... Full Description

A large number of effective multifamily energy programs have supported retrofits at thousands of properties in the last decade. The next generation of multifamily programs, however, must catalyze the decarbonization of almost all existing... Full Description

Transform your practice by taking responsibility for the carbon footprint of your work. This session reviews existing tools and frameworks, from planning scale to site and garden design, integrating metrics from both architecture and landscape... Full Description

Wood-insulated panels (WIPs) combine CLT with rigid exterior wood fiber insulation (WFI) to create a consistent, uniform panel with continuous exterior insulation. These panels can be used to fabricate shell systems, delivering a structural/... Full Description

We will present the IAQ monitoring program at the Finch Cambridge passive house development, first year results, and lessons learned at Finch and in attempting an IAQ monitoring program at another site.  IAQ monitoring in all common spaces and... Full Description

Bowdoin College is currently constructing a pair of connected campus buildings, both with mass timber structures. Located in the Pine Tree State, the project is ironically using timber sourced overseas. This session will use the example of the... Full Description

While more residential customers have turned to heat pumps as an efficient alternative to electric resistance heating, to shift away from delivered fuels, or to add cooling to their home, the modest gains in heat pump penetration have largely... Full Description

Building Energy Performance Standards are being introduced throughout the Northeast, including Boston’s BERDO 2.0. Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE), already adopted by several states, can act as a ‘carrot’ for property owners to... Full Description

The Lloyd Center for the Environment is an environmental education building on a coastal nature preserve. This building is pursuing the most stringent environmental certification – LBC – and it is being constructed by students from Greater New... Full Description

We learn much of what we know about how buildings really perform from doing measurements and monitoring. This session presents five case studies in which targeted data monitoring led to understanding and resolutions of apparently vexing issues.... Full Description

Global change requires local action! While the climate crisis has been well articulated at the global level by the United Nations, national governments, and scientific consensus, climate solutions still require community-scale responses. Ancient... Full Description

Most of our existing buildings are already constructed with fossil fuels as the heat source. In this session, BEC will demonstrate the successes of retrofitting high performance electrification, through real projects in various phases from design... Full Description

Buildings and deforestation together produce 50% of global carbon emissions. This session will address how climate-smart forestry and sustainable agriculture can store carbon in ecological landscapes and generate wood and plant-based building... Full Description

While project teams typically establish quantifiable performance targets for their projects, there is no magic bullet for defining the right energy consumption goal for each project. This panel of high-performance experts and architects will... Full Description

As buildings become part of the climate change solution, more building professionals and their customers want to know how they can reduce carbon emissions in home retrofits. The presenters conducted a research study to answer this question by... Full Description

The electric grid is changing rapidly - with more intermittent, renewable energy resources contributing to the power generation supply, more dispatchable baseload retiring, and more extreme weather events causing outages. Providing... Full Description

The City of Boston is on the cutting edge of emissions performance standards for existing buildings. Staff from the City’s Environment Department will present on Boston’s new Building Emissions Reduction Ordinance (BERDO 2.0). The purpose of this... Full Description

The Design for Freedom Initiative is raising awareness about the pervasiveness of forced and child labor in the construction supply chain. The materials that go into our buildings are heavily reliant on slave labor.  We’ll explore the risks and... Full Description

Residential Energy Efficiency programs are poised to see a shift in scope from weatherization to decarbonization that will include deeper retrofits and strategies to eliminate fossil fuels in and outside the home.  This panel will discuss the... Full Description

With so many ways to retrofit a building, how can owners identify the right scope of work? What about the right timing? Even the most well-intentioned building owner may leave carbon savings on the table, choose the wrong ECM or retrofit solution... Full Description

Solid mass masonry buildings are a significant fraction of the existing building stock, and many contribute to the historic fabric of neighborhoods. However, with wall R-values of R-3 to R-5, they do not meet modern standards for energy... Full Description

Sustainability in lighting is usually linked to energy use only, but it is time to face the real challenges of quantifying the impact of design decisions made throughout the product life cycle. While we may not have complete information on life... Full Description