Patrick Sets Goals for ‘Zero Net Energy’ Buildings

By Matt Murphy, The Sun, Lowell, Mass.

Mar. 16–BOSTON — The future of construction in Massachusetts could be paved in green.

Looking to make Massachusetts an incubator for clean energy technology and a pace-setter in the so-called “green collar” economy, state leaders are embracing policies that encourage both energy conservation and the use of renewable energy sources.

Driving that point home, Gov. Deval Patrick has announced an ambitious new goal of setting standards that would encourage both public and private sector buildings to produce all necessary energy on-site through the use of renewables and energy conservation by 2030.

Even aging cities like Lowell, where drafty mills are undergoing conversions, can take advantage of many new technologies that should keep existing spaces in the city viable for years to come.

The Patrick administration already issued an executive order for state agencies to reduce energy use by 35 percent, curb greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent and increase renewables sources by 30 percent all by 2020.

At the third annual BuildingEnergy08 trade conference in Boston last week, the governor said he was creating a new task force that would draw on the expertise of architects, designers and construction professionals to lead Massachusetts toward a goal of “zero net energy” buildings.

“Help us as a state government, and as a society, get to zero. That is the least we can do for the future generations to come,” Patrick said.

More than 3,000

participants registered for this year’s BuildingEnergy08 conference, sponsored by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association. More than 150 clean energy companies displayed their products at the Seaport World Trade Center, where conference organizers hosted three days of seminars and panel discussions.

Almost everyone knows about solar, wind and hydro power. But many engineers and architects were interested to learn that the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, in cooperation with Worcester Polytechnic Institute, was pursuing research also under way in Britain and Sweden to harness energy from the heat trapped in asphalt on the warm summer days.

And what about all that wastewater produced by city and town sewerage treatment plants? There is technology allowing some cities to turn that sludge into electricity.

Buildings account for about 40 percent of all energy consumption nationwide, according experts on hand.

Building “green” means reducing that consumption — sometimes by as much as half — and relying on renewable sources like solar panels to produce a significant portion of the remaining energy needed.

At a seminar on rehabilitating existing buildings, Bart Bales, senior engineer at Rhode Island-based RISE Engineering, said the most important first step is making the decision not to start from scratch.

By rehabbing old buildings, Bales said the energy consumption needed to demolish and build a new building is already eliminated.

Once the decision is made to reuse an existing structure, designers said the next step is to “retro-fit” those buildings to be energy efficient. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, from insulation, to the use of natural daylight to limit lighting electricity costs, to installing ground-source heat pumps that recycle energy from the ground to heat and cool buildings depending on the season.

At a four-building mill complex in Whitinsville, Martine Dion said her firm converted more than 36,000 square feet of riverfront mill space into an energy-efficient mixed-use development.

Dion said her team used high efficiency lighting, geothermal heating, solar panels and a refurbished hydro-electric dam to reduce energy consumption by 48 percent.

The project was completed on a budget of $9.8 million, with $400,000 in grants from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

Because lighting can amount to as much as 40 percent of a building’s energy needs, electrical engineer Julian Astbury said more designers are using photo cells and dimmers to limit the use of electricity, and room occupancy sensors to prevent wasted energy consumption.

In Stamford, Conn., the town’s pollution control authority has started turning the sludge extracted from its wastewater treatment plant into electricity through a process called gasification.

The town also turns the sludge into solid pellets that it sells as fertilizer to the state of New York.

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