BuildingEnergy Boston 2023 Sessions
Tuesday
| Session Title | Speakers | Room | Areas of Focus |
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Tuesday Keynote — Revolutionary Codes: Bringing Net-Zero to Scale This community has spent decades laying the groundwork for net-zero-energy buildings. Now we stand at an exciting turning point, as the technologies and approaches we have long fought for are beginning to enter the mainstream and even be written... Full Description |
Harbor 1-3 |
Policy, Codes, and Standards |
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Commitment to Learning: A Case Study of Three Public Schools Public school projects are a highly visible commitment from a community towards future generations, serve a wide range of students from diverse backgrounds, and are a valuable resource to the surrounding community. This case study will show three... Full Description |
Harbor 1 |
Design and Construction Process Building Systems Materials Health and Comfort |
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Scaling Low Carbon Market Transformation for Building Products Operational carbon is challenging but attacking embodied carbon is a complete nightmare! How can firms streamline the deadly research drain and get compliance across all teams for low carbon, healthy material choices? Owners, how can you set and... Full Description |
Harbor 2 |
Justice and Equity Design and Construction Process Building Systems Materials |
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Heat Pump Design Challenges in Larger Buildings: Air-to-Air VRF or Air-to-Water Hydronic Electrification of HVAC systems and the elimination of fossil fuel heating in high rise building space conditioning systems poses unique design and system selection challenges. Presenters will share two case studies for the design of VRF HVAC,... Full Description |
Harbor 3 |
Design and Construction Process Building Systems |
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Zero Energy Modular at Scale: Factories, Builders, and Design Professionals Wanted VEIC’s work on Zero Energy Modular (ZEM) homes has helped hundreds of low and moderate income families achieve dignified, resilient, low-carbon housing. Over the past decade, we’ve partnered with five factories and countless funding partners and... Full Description |
Marina 1 |
Justice and Equity Design and Construction Process Policy, Codes, and Standards |
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Addressing Racism and Subtle Acts of Exclusion in the Design and Construction Workplace Expanding our workforce by meaningful inclusion and retention of people from marginalized groups will be critical to scale our work. We have all heard statements, jokes, and questions in the workplace that make us cringe, but we may not have the... Full Description |
Marina 3-4 |
Justice and Equity Training and Workforce Development |
| Session Title | Speakers | Room | Areas of Focus |
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Driving Down Carbon in Concrete: From One Project to the Mainstream Concrete accounts for approximately 11% of annual global carbon emissions. It is a material too important to ignore. Learn how BU’s Center for Computing and Data Sciences applied low-carbon concrete goals and selected structural elements to reach... Full Description |
Harbor 1 |
Design and Construction Process Building Systems Materials Policy, Codes, and Standards |
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Accelerating Building Decarbonization with Tariffed On-Bill Financing Imagine your utility told you they wanted to invest in state-of-the-art technology for your home or business. No taking on debt, and no matter if you're a renter. Your obligation? Paying a monthly tariff on your electric bill no greater than the... Full Description |
Harbor 2 |
Justice and Equity Business and Finance |
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Hotel Marcel: The Only Passive House Certified Hotel Bruce Becker is the architect, developer, owner, and operator of Hotel Marcel. He will discuss the conversion of the formerly vacant Pirelli Building in New Haven into Hotel Marcel, a 165-room LEED Platinum all-electric boutique hotel and... Full Description |
Harbor 3 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Building Systems Energy Production and Storage |
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Tales from the Trenches: Passive House Ventilation Commissioning Roadblocks We will present tales from the trenches for ventilation approaches within the context of the Passive House building certification standard. This standard has set a high benchmark for low-energy buildings and is widely known as the most rigorous... Full Description |
Marina 1 |
Design and Construction Process Building Systems Health and Comfort Operations and Maintenance |
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Fundamentals of Functional Flashing The vast majority of construction defect litigation is over failures of water management. As we construct lower and lower energy buildings, we’re reducing their physical ability to withstand a little “whoopsy” with your water barriers. We’ll go... Full Description |
Marina 3-4 |
Building Envelope |
| Session Title | Speakers | Room | Areas of Focus |
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Energy Storage in High Performance Buildings Before PVs became affordable, excess solar energy was stored thermally. Energy storage, both thermal and electrical, aids grid penetration of renewables and builds resilience on-site. We’ll look at passive and active thermal storage in advanced... Full Description |
Harbor 1 |
Building Systems Energy Production and Storage |
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Reaching Net Zero Carbon through Building Energy Codes While the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) is already being used by some states, wider adoption is anticipated with the initiation of DOE’s Resilient and Efficient Codes Implementation (RECI) program. This session highlights key... Full Description |
Harbor 2 |
Design and Construction Process Policy, Codes, and Standards |
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Climate Equity is Right Under Our Feet: Ground Source Heat Pumps and Community Thermal Networks Recent technology developments and incentive programs are creating new opportunities for ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) at the building and neighborhood scale (networked geothermal). Practitioners designing and piloting GSHPs will describe how... Full Description |
Marina 1 |
Justice and Equity Building Systems Energy Production and Storage Health and Comfort |
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Electrification Journeys: How Two Companies Decarbonized Their Manufacturing Processes Electrifying the manufacturing process of building materials is a critical step towards decarbonizing the built environment. Going where no companies have gone before, two leading edge companies share their journey to reduce the carbon impact of... Full Description |
Marina 3-4 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Materials |
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Pretty Good House: A Guide to Creating Better Homes Have you heard about the building standard that's not a standard? Learn how to create energy efficient, healthy, sustainable homes with an emphasis on making the concepts and technical details accessible to builders and designers of all levels of... Full Description |
Harbor 1 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Materials Health and Comfort |
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The Results are In: Lessons Learned from Post Occupancy Data in Multifamily Passive Houses Curtis + Ginsberg Architects has completed 6 multifamily Passive House buildings, with two more in construction and six more in design. Steven Winter Associates has completed over 20 Passive House buildings, with 15 more in construction and 30+... Full Description |
Harbor 2 |
Building Envelope Building Systems Materials Operations and Maintenance |
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Scalable Ground Source Heat Pump Systems: Mass. Maritime Academy Case Study The Massachusetts Maritime Academy consists of 16 buildings comprising approximately 600,000 sf, with heating for the buildings is provided by gas fired hot water boilers in each. They have undertaken a planning effort and initial design for a... Full Description |
Harbor 3 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Building Systems Energy Production and Storage |
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Leveraging Federal and State Incentives for Building Decarbonization While recent state legislation across the region has codified ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in statute, these bills have had a clear lack of funding to address the massive capital investment needed. The tide may now be... Full Description |
Marina 1 |
Policy, Codes, and Standards Business and Finance Training and Workforce Development |
Wednesday
| Session Title | Speakers | Room | Areas of Focus |
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Wednesday Keynote — Why We Stopped Doing Deep Energy Retrofits Made possible by DXS and HTS. After completing many Deep Energy Retrofit projects (DERs) in the late 2000s early 2010s here in Massachusetts, our residential design-build remodeling company's approach to energy retrofit work has shifted towards... Full Description |
Harbor 1-3 |
Building Envelope Building Systems Materials Health and Comfort |
| Session Title | Speakers | Room | Areas of Focus |
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Windows and Fenestration: Basics and Beyond Windows are a key part of the building enclosure, but they are also the costliest, most fragile, and worst thermally performing component. We will present on windows from our viewpoint as building enclosure consultants and forensic failure... Full Description |
Harbor 1 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Building Systems Health and Comfort |
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Heads in Beds: the Colby College Hyper-Speed Dormitory Project Typical university dormitory projects are capital intensive and take several years to complete. This project turned this practice on its head. Using modular construction, on-site precast foundations, an integrated design-build team and low-... Full Description |
Harbor 2 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Building Systems |
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Global Adaptation of Passive House: Culture, Climate and Challenges With rising determination to fight the climate crisis worldwide, practitioners are finding the Passive House standard a potent solution for the building sector. As passive and other sustainable building standards are proliferating worldwide,... Full Description |
Harbor 3 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Building Systems Materials |
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Building Relationships: Community Ambassadors and Advisors Research has shown that solar adoption in a neighborhood spurs more solar adoption. Conversely, if clean energy adoption is not seeded in other communities, these communities lose out on the benefits of clean energy. This panel will provide... Full Description |
Marina 1 |
Justice and Equity |
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Carbon Storing Buildings: A Gateway to Justice and Belonging Join principals of New Frameworks and Builders for Climate Action for a critical look at our practices that have endeavored to embed justice and belonging alongside the highest goals for building health, efficiency, and carbon storage in projects... Full Description |
Marina 3-4 |
Justice and Equity Building Systems Materials Training and Workforce Development |
| Session Title | Speakers | Room | Areas of Focus |
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Creating Healthy, Decarbonized Classrooms Many classroom environments are unhealthy and uncomfortable, creating poor learning environments with high absenteeism. Older, unventilated classrooms can be economically decarbonized with improved air quality and comfort. This session will... Full Description |
Harbor 1 |
Building Systems Health and Comfort Business and Finance Operations and Maintenance |
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Size and Selection Matter: Using New Data and Tools to Design Effective Heat Pump Systems Think you know effective heat pump sizing and design? Significant market growth of cold-climate air-source heat pumps has resulted in new insights and lessons learned. Come explore new tools and best practices to enable improved design, sizing,... Full Description |
Harbor 2 |
Building Systems Health and Comfort Policy, Codes, and Standards Training and Workforce Development |
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Pushing the Glass Envelope: A BERDO 2.0 Compliance Pathway for a High Performance Building This session offers a case study of a curtainwall building in which the project team collaborated on an iterative energy modeling and design process to achieve aggressive energy reduction goals. Our panel will share insight on the process that... Full Description |
Harbor 3 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Building Systems Policy, Codes, and Standards |
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Retrofitting Existing Buildings into Low-Carbon Assets Retrofitting buildings to reduce operating emissions is a key climate strategy. Viable, affordable, and scalable strategies must be implemented. However, we must avoid a surge of embodied carbon emissions from the manufacturing of building... Full Description |
Marina 1 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Materials |
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Touch a Trade: Inspiring The Next Generation Workforce On October 22, 2022 we held the inaugural Touch A Trade event in Kent, CT. The goal of this event was to introduce pre-teen and teenage children to various trades via hands-on experiences. This first event attracted nearly 500 participants,... Full Description |
Marina 3-4 |
Justice and Equity Design and Construction Process Business and Finance Training and Workforce Development |
| Session Title | Speakers | Room | Areas of Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
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New England’s Favorite Roof Retrofit: Moisture Data from Three MA Case Studies Dense packing cellulose in roof slopes has been a common insulation retrofit strategy in New England for a long time, however technically it has not been allowed by code without the inclusion of venting or foam insulation at the roof sheathing... Full Description |
Harbor 1 |
Building Envelope Materials |
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The Path to Emergency Electric: Lessons from the Kenzi Passive House buildings go hand-in-hand with on-site generation and electrification, but what happens when you have code-required emergency power backup? The Kenzi tackled the wicked problem of designing, pricing, and permitting the first all-... Full Description |
Harbor 2 |
Justice and Equity Design and Construction Process Building Systems Energy Production and Storage |
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Electrification of Domestic Hot Water in Multifamily Buildings Methods for electrification of DHW in multifamily buildings all pose challenges. This session will provide an overview of existing technologies and a brief history of how we arrived at central air-source heat pump technology as the least... Full Description |
Harbor 3 |
Design and Construction Process Building Systems |
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How Will You Meet the Demand? Scaling Passive House Certification for the New Energy Code With the coming updates to building energy codes, there is an anticipation of growth in the volume of Passive House buildings. It is important to have a fully scalable approach to successfully guide teams from scope development through... Full Description |
Marina 1 |
Design and Construction Process Policy, Codes, and Standards |
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Green Jobs Training: What Works? What Doesn't? The global implications of climate change require immediate local action, with a major priority being to have a well-trained green workforce to meet the growing labor needs. Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Boston, alongside various... Full Description |
Marina 3-4 |
Justice and Equity Policy, Codes, and Standards Business and Finance Training and Workforce Development |
| Session Title | Speakers | Room | Areas of Focus |
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Saving Energy in Hospitals with Passive House Techniques As the energy and carbon landscape evolves, the design and construction of hospitals must change to meet new challenges. New techniques, perspectives and methodologies must be applied to drive innovation and achieve outstanding results. From the... Full Description |
Harbor 1 |
Design and Construction Process Building Envelope Building Systems Health and Comfort |
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Scaling Up Material Health The impact of building materials on human and environmental health has received increased attention, and hundreds of design firms have pledged to support healthier materials. Ensuring healthier material selections requires complex decisions and... Full Description |
Harbor 2 |
Design and Construction Process Materials Health and Comfort Training and Workforce Development |
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A Necessary Evolution: Three Companies Instigate Change via Offsite Construction To achieve mass adoption of offsite construction, the building process as we know it has to be reevaluated from multiple perspectives. This is especially true when combined with the goals of scaling up low-carbon and high-performance objectives.... Full Description |
Harbor 3 |
Justice and Equity Design and Construction Process Building Systems Training and Workforce Development |
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Decarbonizing and Electrifying DHW Using Commercial-Scale CO2 Heat Pumps This session will discuss the advantages and challenges of using CO2 Heat Pumps for decarbonizing and efficiently electrifying commercial Domestic Hot Water systems. The session will outline and discuss the Mitsubishi Electric Heat2O DHW solution... Full Description |
Marina 1 |
Design and Construction Process Building Systems Energy Production and Storage Operations and Maintenance |
