BuildingEnergy Pro Tour

Join NESEA for a Pro Tour of a new, all-electric, 6,000-square-foot nature conservancy headquarters in Southern New Hampshire. This recently completed net-zero energy building demonstrates how high-performance, low-carbon goals can be achieved within a typical nonprofit construction budget when sustainability goals are established early.

Join NESEA in Connecticut for a Pro Tour featuring an exciting collaboration between two NESEA Bottom Lines members (Wolfworks and Rare Forms), showcasing a new, single family home, built from straw panels to reduce embodied carbon.

Join NESEA for a Pro Tour of the landmarked Harlem River Houses, New York City’s first purpose-built public housing development. This development has undergone a thorough and senstive renewal, updating the building for its residents while preserving its historic character. Originally built in 1937, the complex now features electrified heating and cooling systems and other energy-efficient upgrades, restored public art, and revitalized community and outdoor spaces. This Pro Tour will highlight the seamless integration of energy-conscious design into the historic fabric. We will share the design strategies used to achieve significant performance improvements and meet Enterprise Green Communities Criteria for affordable housing while preserving architectural integrity.

Join NESEA for a Pro Tour of an innovative Single-family home featuring new wood-frame construction on concrete bond beam over 1892 stone foundation. This interesting project uses wood stove heating with no mechanical cooling, heating the home with mechanical ventilation. An attached greenhouse is a classic passive solar heating element, upgraded with contemporary glazing technology. The ventilation concept delivers more fresh air to living spaces than a typical concept.

Join NESEA for a Pro Tour of an occupied 19th century factory building undergoing a re-renovation and electrification using historic tax credits. There are numerous points of interest in this project, including updating to air-to-water electric heating and cooling with minimized refrigerant distribution.

Join NESEA for a Pro Tour where we will learn about East Montpelier Vermont's decision to electrify their city garage, which could be a replicable solution for other towns in the Northeast. This is the first building of its kind that NESEA has featured in our Pro Tour program.

NESEA returns to New York’s Capital District for a Pro Tour of a new, 3-phase Passive House development project. When complete, this development will total over 200,000 square feet and provide a total of 168 Passive House-certified units, making it one of the largest Phius-certified projects to date.

Join NESEA for an in-depth Pro Tour of a redesigned and fiercely independent art center that dates back to 1979 when it became a haven for radical art and radical politics, squatters and hardcore punks. Over the decades, as other downtown spaces went under or were priced out, this space has endured by the skin of its teeth as a link to an old New York that exists mainly in memory. Now, the center is getting a brand-new building, courtesy of $21 million from the city that for years fought to evict it.

On September 4, NESEA returns to Burlington, VT for an in-depth Pro Tour of a new, all-electric high school and tech center. We’ll be visiting a 250,000 square-foot campus and learning from the professionals behind the project how it all came together.

Join NESEA for a Pro Tour that demonstrates, at real scale, how high-performance building strategies can directly support both climate goals and housing affordability. We will be touring and learning about a new development in Dorchester that delivers 12 affordable homeownership units across four Passive House–designed, four-unit buildings-the first of their kind in the neighborhood. Among other building science topics, the project team will teach attendees about the off-site panelizing approach that made this project possible. This project shows how thoughtful design, rigorous performance standards, and repeatable construction methods can produce healthier, lower-energy homes without sacrificing cost control or delivery timelines.

Join us in Boston for a Pro Tour of an innovative new school and community facility, located on a tight, one-acre site in Boston’s dense, historic Chinatown. This building is a transformative example of high-performance, sustainable, and inclusive school. Designed to serve 650 students in grades 6-12, this all-electric, LEED Platinum-certified facility replaces outdated buildings with a fully programmed middle and high school campus focused on health, equity, and climate resilience.

Join us for a Pro Tour of a resilient new development that will be created on Salem Neck, located between Collin's Cove and Salem Harbor, in Salem MA. The site will include one building with 124 sustainable and affordable homes, amenity spaces, and a publicly accessible park. The building will be all-electric, Passive House certified with an envelope, systems, and solar panels that reduce operational energy significantly. Low-embodied carbon materials, such as wood fiber based fill and batt insulation are also incorporated throughout

Join NESEA for a Pro Tour of a new construction, custom single-family home in Sherborn, Massachusetts, designed to minimize embodied carbon, maximize operational efficiency, support healthy indoor air quality, and mitigate negative impacts to the immediate watershed, all while providing a beautiful and functional space tailored to the client’s lifestyle.

Join us for a tour of a 73,000 GSF, 3-story building featuring 68 units of affordable senior housing, including 66 one-bedroom apartments and 2 two-bedroom apartments. This building was designed with high-performance building materials and systems to maximize energy efficiency and sustainability.

Join NESEA for a special event, that will combine a Pro Tour of Franklin Cummings Tech's new all-electric, 68,000 square foot building and a networking event to meet the businesses in our BuildingEnergy Access program.

Originally built in 1888 as two-story duplex apartments, and renovated in 2003, these untis are being redesigned and updated to achieve Passive House certification through a comprehensive Deep Energy Retrofit (DER) of the buildings' exterior envelopes. This project is intended to serve as a demo, showing the benefits of passive house guided retrofits that can be done with minimal resident disruption.

In autumn 2023, in just two weeks, Paul A. Castrucci Architects shipped and assembled 47 modular units from Leola, PA, to East Flatbush, Brooklyn. The result? A four-story residential complex with affordable, Passive House design. This innovative project aims to reduce energy use and embodied carbon, while embracing circular building design. This building is the first modular Passive House building in NYC.

This September, NESEA invites you to join us for a tour of two recently completed multifamily buildings in Portland, both built to Phius standards. Together, these side-by-side buildings provide the community with 95 units of high performance affordable housing. Not only will this event showcase the design and construction of the buildings and their systems, we will also learn about their place in the larger context of the Mercy Hospital Campus Redevelopment project and the surrounding neighborhood.

NESEA heads to Connecticut to offer a tour of a renovated and expanded 1940s elementary school that has been transformed into a modern, net-zero facility, complete with a 66 well geothermal HVAC system, to serve 400 students.

Join us for a Pro Tour of a high performance, 55,000 square foot building on the Dartmouth College campus that combined a major addition with targeted renovation to house the newly created Irving Institute for Energy and Society.