Justice and Equity

What was once a vision by the Green Justice Coalition (GJC) to support environmental justice communities by making them resilient and removing fossil fuels in their neighborhoods is becoming reality. The goal is simple: How can you provide a decarbonized heating and cooling system on a resilient virtual microgrid without taxing the residents? Chinatown Power Inc., along with the GJC are set to make that vision a reality.

What does it take to meet the Passive House standard in countries with extreme climates? Can Passive House be adapted to specific cultural demands that seem at odds with Passive House principles? What can we learn from vernacular architecture? The session takes a deeper dive into the investigation of how the Passive House approach can be deployed globally, its opportunities and challenges.

This session will showcase the implementation of a high-performance façade assembly on an existing high rise concrete multi-family housing building complex, and the resulting measured data of operational energy and water consumption. In addition to addressing climate resilience, we will discuss how the project addresses community resilience by allowing the tenants to remain in their homes through construction and improving the quality of their spaces through design.

While electrification of domestic hot water is picking up steam, outdated sizing guidelines result in oversized, expensive, and inefficient systems, especially in affordable multifamily housing. New Ecology’s data, from over 20 affordable multifamily housing sites, reveals differences between the measured loads and traditional sizing guidelines, presenting opportunities for higher system efficiency, reduced operating costs, and lower first costs as these buildings move to electrify their domestic hot water.

MassCEC’s Decarbonization Pathways pilot has tested and refined a protocol for a home decarbonization assessment with a goal of eliminating the use of fossil fuels in small residential buildings. The pilot also tested approaches to providing targeted support at the time customers are ready to act. This panel will cover the outcomes from the first cohort, discuss the ongoing second cohort, and describe further refinements for the upcoming third cohort.

Building with bio-based materials allow us to address the combined crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequity. Workforce development, housing access, regional supply chains, and sustainable food and forest systems are all key elements of climate resilience and justice. In this session, learn how building materials fit into this pattern as we explore a UN report on biomaterials and a Northeast initiative to scale their use in the built environment.

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. The session will explore how the three primarily residential companies have built their businesses around offsite manufacturing principles and have developed strategies to “unsilo” the industry.

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-electric building above four floors in the City of Boston. We will dive into the nitty gritty of design, funding, and procurement, reveal our strategy for Boston Fire Department concerns, and discuss what code language we leaned on to pull it all together.

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 community partners, piloted the Bridges to Green Jobs program in early 2021 to make clean energy industry jobs accessible to Black and Brown residents.

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, exceeding projected attendance and demonstrating the value of similar future events. This session will focus on our planning process, outcomes, and feedback from presenters and visitors alike, and appraise the value of the Touch a Trade event as a viable workforce development strategy to be scaled in other communities.

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 - for the purpose of workshopping how our industry can scale carbon storage and justice, rapidly, to address climate justice.

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 lessons learned and best practices for using the community coach/ambassador/advisor model to promote clean energy in underserved communities. Speakers will talk about addressing language barriers and building trust.

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 GSHPs can reduce the environmental burden on LMI communities by decarbonizing space and water heating.  Through design and case studies, they will describe what characteristics make a building or neighborhood a promising fit for GSHP implementation, and those posing significant challenges.

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 resulting energy savings. The tariff would extend only until the utility recovers its investment, and if you move, would simply transfer to the next occupant.

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 lending institutions to make this happen. The need is growing, not fading—for workforce housing, farmworker housing, Accessory Dwelling Units, mobile home replacement, affordable housing communities (single- and multifamily), and more. The problem? The ZEM model does not scale well within the current paradigm.

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 skills to respond constructively in the moment. This session will offer tools to engage with these subtle acts of exclusion and focus on learning skills from real examples from job sites and office environments. Core principles such as intent vs. impact, acknowledging our own biases, and recognizing micro-aggressions will be explored.

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 ensure compliance with your standards when onboarding design teams? Builders, how can you leverage your buying power to accelerate market transformation through aggregation without having to change any behavior?