Blue sky thinking

As state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger landed in rainswept London, delegates to the ASHRAE meeting at Long Beach from 23-27 June were enjoying the warm, dry climate of south-western California. There was genuine warmth in the welcome from locals too, despite the slightly sanitised veneer which sees a small army of street pressure-washers continuously scour the strip of this Pacific edge shoreline.

Outgoing president Terry Townsend’s evangelistic final address certainly lacked some of the humility of his incoming performance just 12 months earlier, but probably with some justification. ASHRAE has shifted position in a very few years towards its aspiration of being world leader in issues of sustainability. Townsend’s fast-talking performance was not only stuffed with green buzzwords but also pledges to action. He reeled off areas of active development including the Retail Energy Alliance – a project with Wal-Mart and others to reduce retail energy use; Net Zero Buildings by 2031; the Clinton Climate Initiative, on which ASHRAE has been advising; and the far-reaching sector-specific low energy design guides currently being published by ASHRAE.

David Rogers of the US Department of Energy followed with an affirmation of the will of the federal government to “change the way we power our homes and offices”. In a direct plea he canvassed ASHRAE member support, imploring them “to act now” to promote stronger building codes and ratchet up energy efficiency. All federal buildings now have to show 30% improvement over the 2004 standards, but he was adamant that “we need to do more faster”. “Our nation needs you and our planet needs you to be successful” was his heartfelt call.

Incoming president Kent Peterson then took centre stage with a very polished talk of his vision for the future. Using a concealed teleprompter, Peterson’s stand-up newsreader style presentation had a humility that signified an ASHRAE change in emphasis from technological fixer to true philosophical understanding. His focus was on producing engineering solutions that were beyond “right-sized HVAC systems” and he enthused that “energy efficiency should always be the elegant alternative to fuel consumption”. He recognised that this is an industry that has traditionally been slow to change and that many building decisions are made today without recognising the life-cycle benefits of improved efficiency.

Peterson echoed the concerns of many engineers in the UK when he lamented the lack of building performance and the fact that most current design methods favour major component selection over system performance. He implied that the current basis of fee payments in the US do not typically reward innovation and reduced consumption of resources.

The US Energy Information Agency recently reported that world energy consumption is projected to grow by 71% from 2003 to 2030

ASHRAE President Kent Peterson

The incoming president also celebrated the CIBSE ASHRAE mutual recognition agreement by becoming the first ASHRAE member to join CIBSE using this accelerated route. Peterson received his certificate of membership from CIBSE technical director Hywel Davis. Canadian Tim McGinn of Cohos Evamy, a well established member of both institutions and specialist in sustainable building design, was keen to extol the virtues of CIBSE – particularly in the areas of guidance in “green” design.

Someone enthusiastic to get hold of a CIBSE application form was Mike Sherber, New York employee of Buro Happold. He is an expert in direct evaporative cooling – an area that has seen only specialist UK application in the last 20 years because of perceived difficulties of maintenance and knock-on effects from the tragic, but unrelated, problems with legionella – and CIBSE could benefit greatly from his expertise.

ASHRAE’s proposed new Standard 189 for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings was heralded as being the first green building standard in the US. It includes similar considerations to the UK’s BREEAM and is designed to be incorporated into state building codes. The standard is not designed as a building rating system, but as a set of criteria that must be met. In a similar way to developments following the UK’s Planning Policy Statement 22, proposed Standard 189 encourages the integration of renewables into building design. Using the US Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED Green Building Rating System, the overall goal is to achieve a minimum 30% reduction in energy cost (and CO2 equivalent) over the 2007 standard on energy consumption – ASHRAE Standard 90.1. The standard contains extensive details on all aspects of the performance of buildings, equipment, internal air quality, environmental impact and energy use. Tellingly, it lists the carbon emission factor for grid-based electricity as 0.799kg CO2 per kWhe (compared with UK values of under 0.5kg CO2 per kWhe).

The opening “inspirational” speaker for the meeting was Bertrand Piccard, who had circumnavigated the Earth in his balloon. He quoted Einstein as having said: “The people who are best at plan B are the most successful.” It looks like ASHRAE is well on the way to shifting to plan B.