Towards a Sustainable Global Construction and Buildings Value Chain

Construction sector accounts for 50% of global resource extraction, making it the most material-intensive sector in the world. This LeadIT  brief adopts a value-chain approach to understand where major challenges and opportunities for sustainability occur, and how these could be shaped through decisions made at different stages.…

Building Opportunity: New York – The Jobs, Economic and Equity Benefits of Decarbonizing and Electrifying Buildings Across the Empire State

New York State is home to more than 120,000 workers engaged in work directly related to decarbonizing and electrifying buildings across the state. This includes work like installing electric induction stoves in apartment buildings on Staten Island, replacing old insulation in the attics of single-family homes in Plattsburgh and fitting new pipes for geothermal heating and cooling systems in commercial buildings in Rochester.

To better understand how decarbonizing and electrifying New York’s buildings would impact the state’s labor market, E2 took a deeper dive into the state’s overall building decarbonization and electrification employment data.

By looking at five employment areas …

Decarbonizing Mass Market Buildings

In conjunction with The Clean Fight New York, a not–for–profit climate tech accelerator supported by NYSERDA and the Department of Energy, OurEnergyPolicy hosted two conversations examining the challenge of decarbonizing class B and C buildings, also referred to as non–luxury residential and commercial properties. Both conversations were structured to include experts from across the political spectrum and to include energy leaders with extensive experience in government, non–profit organizations, academia, real estate, law, innovation and energy efficiency services.

The roundtable discussions that resulted in this whitepaper were organized to …

Cost-Effective Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings: Decarbonization Potential for a US Retail Portfolio

Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs) are energy-efficient buildings that optimize energy use for grid services, occupant needs and preferences, and cost reductions in a continuous and integrated way. GEBs play a critical role in reducing energy use and emissions in our buildings and helping our power system become cleaner, while remaining reliable and affordable.

Through an extensive assessment of a large US retail portfolio, this new study recommends bundles of measures for optimized portfolio-wide investments and provides investment pathways to support decarbonization. A total of 113 stores were selected for the analysis across 43 states, seven climate zones, seven electricity tariff …

U.S. Building Stock Characterization Study: A National Typology for Decarbonizing U.S. Buildings

The report provides key decision makers a foundational tool to identify technology requirements and engineering solutions for moving the existing U.S. building stock toward a net-zero-carbon future. This analysis supports a key initiative of DOE’s Building Technologies Office—the Advanced Building Construction (ABC) Initiative.

The national building characterization study will serve as a foundational data source and tool for future analyses, such as assessments of the potential impacts of retrofit packages on building thermal energy use, including heating, cooling, ventilation, and water heating. Supporting the development of decarbonization strategies for the U.S. building stock, these retrofit packages will range from …

Making Buildings Better: Building Electrification Provisions In The Build Back Better Act

Electrification can decarbonize the building sector when combined with energy efficiency, putting the United States on the path to a stable climate future while removing fossil fuel appliances that harm human health from our buildings. The House version of the Build Back Better Act includes $12.5 billion for building electrification and energy efficiency incentives to decarbonize the building sector, improve public health, and reduce consumer bills.…

Grid Ready: Powering NYC’s All-Electric Buildings

Solving climate change will require drastic carbon reductions. For buildings, that means shifting from fossil-fuel heating systems to all-electric ones. ​​

About 67 percent of New York City’s building emissions come from burning fossil fuels on-site, primarily for heating and hot water. There’s growing consensus that electrifying buildings is necessary, but less certainty about when buildings should be electrified and whether our grid can support this large-scale transformation.

This report sheds light on how power is delivered to NYC, examines how heat pumps will change electricity demand in buildings, and shows how electrification can be rolled out to carefully manage …

How Air Agencies Can Help End Fossil Fuel Pollution from Buildings

Fossil fuel appliances like gas furnaces and water heaters emit substantial amounts of air pollution from our buildings into our neighborhoods. US building appliances release 425,000 tons of harmful nitrogen oxides each year—more than oil refineries or gas-fired power plants. This pollution causes significant health impacts including thousands of premature deaths each year, with severely disproportionate impacts in Communities of Color.

Replacing fossil fuel appliances with efficient, zero-emissions electric alternatives can dramatically reduce building pollution and the resulting health harms and inequities, while providing benefits ranging from job creation to protection from extreme heat.

This Insight Brief recommends that air …

Getting Control of Comfort and Energy: The Benefits of Upgrading to Automated Shades and Advanced Lighting in Commercial Buildings

Interior lighting and window shading innovations have advanced leaps and bounds in the past two decades. Each innovation offers benefits to existing buildings, ranging from improved occupant comfort and wellbeing to significant energy savings. Geared toward building owners and operators, this market facing guide outlines the benefits and best practices to implement lighting and shading retrofits in today’s market.…

Reducing Embodied Carbon in Buildings

Buildings account for at least 39 percent of energy-related global carbon emissions on an annual basis. At least one-quarter of these emissions result from embodied carbon, or the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and disposal of building materials.

This report highlights low-cost and no-cost solutions for reducing embodied carbon in buildings during a project’s design and construction phases. In case studies of three common building types, applying these solutions demonstrates an embodied carbon savings potential of 24 to 46 percent at cost premiums of less than 1 percent.…