Metrics and Tools for Sustainable Buildings Project

Building stakeholders need compelling, practical metrics, tools, and data to support investment choices and policy making related to sustainable building designs, technologies, and regulations. EL is addressing this high priority national need by extending to whole buildings its metrics and tool for sustainable building products known as BEES. This involves developing whole building sustainability metrics based on innovative extensions to LCA and LCC approaches involving building energy simulations. These new metrics assess the “carbon footprint” of buildings as well as 11 other environmental performance metrics, and integrate economic performance metrics to yield science-based measures of the business case for investment choices in green buildings.

What is the problem? In its October 2008 report, Federal R&D Agenda for Net-Zero Energy, High-Performance Green Buildings, the OSTP/NSTC buildings technology R&D (BTRD) subcommittee concludes that, to enable a transformation to performance-based design and operation of the Nation's buildings, next-generation metrics, methods, and tools must be developed that permit a building's sustainability to be measured across the dimensions of performance, scale, and time. In its November 2007 report, A National Green Building Research Agenda, the U.S. Green Building Council identifies as a key barrier to widespread adoption of green building technologies, "the question of how much benefit is obtained and at what cost," citing the need for basic research to "develop protocols for measurement and an integrated database of measured performance at various project scales." In its 2008 Energy Efficiency in Buildings report, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development calls for carbon measurement and verification to make sure policies and regulations (including building codes and standards) are effective and support market measures such as trading. Finally, noting the critical importance of environmental challenges in addition to energy and climate change, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation recommends in its green building roadmap that performance metrics across a full range of environmental impacts be developed and integrated. These needs were further confirmed at an October 2009 NIST workshop of experts assessing measurement science needs for net-zero energy buildings.

Why is it hard to solve? Buildings are complex systems of interacting subsystems with energy performance that varies with technology, level of design integration, geographical region, and time. Assessing building sustainability performance adds more complexity due to the wide range of potential environmental, health, and economic impacts. Furthermore, an integrated portfolio of sustainability performance measurements that captures system complexities and interactions seen in a real building requires a multidisciplinary collaboration among building designers and owners, mechanical engineers, environmental scientists, and economists.

How is it solved today, and by whom? The mission of the international Sustainable Building Alliance, led by EL counterpart agencies in Europe and South America, is to establish common metrics for sustainability evaluation. These metrics, however, are being developed within the confines of prescriptive green building rating systems. The U.S. Green Building Council has a major "LCA[1] into LEED[2]" effort that takes a "bottom-up" approach to life-cycle assessment, but it neither addresses building energy technologies nor the integrated design context. "Top-down" LCA approaches are promising, but current, detailed data are inaccessible and the approach has not been applied to the building industry for any country. Even if other countries were interested in applying top-down approaches, their limited national databases preclude application at the building scale. Business cases for sustainability investment choices are anecdotal at best. None of these efforts address the underlying need for performance-based measurement science permitting traceable sustainability assessment of building energy technologies as installed in a building.

Why NIST? This project supports the EL core competence in measurement science for building energy technologies and is aligned with the EL strategic priority, Measurement Science for Net-Zero Energy, High-Performance Buildings. This research fully supports the measurement science needs articulated in the BTRD R&D agenda for net-zero energy buildings. Finally, EL is a world leader in sustainability performance measurement.

What is the new technical idea? The new idea is to address building sustainability measurement in a holistic, integrated manner that considers complex interactions among building energy technologies and systems across dimensions of performance, scale, and time. At the whole building scale, validated energy models and data being developed under other projects within this program will enable robust energy simulations for energy performance and life-cycle cost measurement. EL will apply new expertise in building energy simulation to apply such building-scale measurements in an integrated design context. In the short term, operational energy measurements will be used to develop practical carbon footprint calculators for benchmarking of buildings against average, above-average, and best-in-class carbon footprints for prototypical commercial and residential building types on a state-by-state basis. In the medium term, operational energy measurements will be combined with innovative life cycle material inventories for prototypical buildings to assess and compare sustainability performance for whole buildings meeting a range of selected building energy codes and standards. These metrics will be embodied in a decision framework including eco-efficiency[3] measures, carbon pricing scenarios, policy options, and assessment and reporting tools to help building industry stakeholders develop business cases and policies for sustainability investment choices.

Why can we succeed now? There is widespread public interest in sustainability and recognition that energy efficiency is a highly desirable National goal. Yet the building industry lacks an accepted definition of sustainability and is demanding performance-based, traceable measurements to help define and measure what makes a building sustainable. Success is likely at this time as the result of recent extensions in traceable measurement science within EL-for both energy and environmental performance measurement-providing the heretofore missing links enabling integration and translation of technology measurements into building sustainability performance measurements. Furthermore, new EL staff with expertise in developing decision frameworks based on carbon pricing will permit this emerging dimension of economic sustainability, with its potentially important energy market consequences, to be included in the measurement framework and tools for the buildings sector.

What is the research plan? In the context of providing a measurement science portfolio enabling net-zero energy, high-performance buildings, three major research activities will be conducted in parallel. They consist of developing databases, measurement protocols, and decision support tools.

Databases. Baseline databases enabling sustainability performance assessment for a range of new and existing commercial and residential buildings, energy technologies and systems will be compiled. These databases will include energy, environment, and economic performance measurements. In FY11, bottom-up life cycle environmental databases will be completed for 20 in-use and market-ready energy technologies covering a wide range of new commercial building types in all 50 states. Compatible, "top-down" databases will also be completed for 42 building types and then integrated with bottom-up data into a first-ever hybrid matrix for the U.S. building/construction industry. On a parallel track, energy and cost databases for new residential buildings will be developed, based on energy efficiency measures suggested by whole building energy simulation tools and sensitive to building type, climate, and energy code. EL will also work with academic experts to begin developing more detailed "top-down" I/O data for the building industry, permitting development of environmental I/O data customized to the same new and existing commercial and residential buildings for which energy and cost data are being compiled.

Measurement Protocols. To enable consistent, meaningful, and practical comparisons of sustainability performance in an integrated design context, standard measurement protocols will be developed, integrated, and simplified for practical use. In FY11, measurement protocols being applied in the short-term will be refined to address industry input received at an FY10 needs workshop. These include (1) methods for extrapolating whole building measurements to state-wide measurements keyed to energy codes and (2) protocols for energy performance measurement that translate technology-based energy performance data into building-specific measurements through use of building simulation tools. Also in FY11, a "hybrid" environmental performance measurement protocol will be applied to synthesize bottom-up and top-down life-cycle performance data, permitting development of first-ever building-scale environmental assessments including life-cycle carbon and environmental footprint metrics. In the medium term, life-cycle costing frameworks will be expanded to accommodate carbon pricing scenarios and econometric modeling techniques will be explored for efficiently estimating various dimensions of building sustainability performance based on large national energy, economic, and environmental datasets. All measurement frameworks will be designed up front with the net zero goal in mind, providing maximum flexibility for evaluation of in-use, market ready, and advanced technologies as well as practical "what if" analysis tools suggested by practicing designers at the FY10 mini-workshop.

Decision Support Tools. In FY11, based on the results of the mini-workshop, a white paper will be completed outlining development plans for the carbon footprint and sustainability calculators planned for release in future years. In support of the carbon footprint calculator planned for FY12, GIS maps depicting energy, carbon, and life-cycle cost measurements by state and energy code will be compiled in FY11. The GIS maps represent the detailed results to be simplified for input to the practical carbon footprint calculator. Also in FY11, a prototype of the carbon footprint calculator will be completed.

 

[1] LCA: Life Cycle Assessment

[2] LEED: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

[3] According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, eco-efficiency means creating more goods and services with ever less use of resources, waste, and pollution.

Outputs:

• “Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of Sustainability Investments,” funded in FY10 by the DOE Federal Energy Management Program.

• Kneifel, Joshua, “Cost-effectiveness of Energy Efficiency Measures Exceeding Current Standards in New Commercial Buildings” CIB World Congress 2010, Sin Salford Quays, United Kingdom, May 10-13, 2010.

• Kneifel, Joshua, “Life-cycle carbon and cost analysis of energy efficiency measures in new commercial buildings,” Energy and Buildings, Vol. 42, Issue 3, P. 333-340, March 2010.

• Helgeson, Jennifer F., and Lippiatt, Barbara C., “Multi-Disciplinary Life-Cycle Metrics and Tools for Green Buildings,” Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 390-398, July 2009

• Suh, S., Strategies for Utilizing Construction Industry Input-Output Data for Extending BEES, IERE Final Report, NIST Contract Report, November 2009.

• Kneifel, Joshua, and Lippiatt, Barbara, “Cost-effectiveness, Carbon Emissions, and Carbon Tax Implications of Energy Efficiency Measures in New Commercial Buildings,” 8th Workshop and Meeting, CIB W108 - Climate Change and the Built Environment, Politecnico di Milano, 26th and 27th March 2009.

• Lippiatt, B., and Helgeson, J., “NIST BusiBEES Metrics and Tools for Green Buildings,” Proceedings of the 2008 World Sustainable Building Conference, Melbourne, Australia, September 2008, pp. 34-41.

• Suh, S., Mapping Input-Output with BEES Life Cycle Flows, University of Minnesota Final Report, NIST Contract NB860010-7-05927, August 2008.

• Lippiatt, B., “Evaluating Sustainability Using Standard Approaches: The BEES Tool,” Journal of ASTM International (JAI), Vol. 5, No. 1, 2008.

• Led NSTC subcommittee team in writing measurement science chapter of October 2008 Federal R&D Agenda for Net Zero Energy, High-Performance Green Buildings.

 

Outcomes:

• New approach for life-cycle carbon and cost analysis of prototypical whole buildings designed to meet a selected set of energy codes

• New approach and data protocol for life-cycle environmental assessment of whole buildings

• BEES software tool for building product sustainability performance measurement, including database of 230 building products

• Section 9002 of the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 tasks USDA with consulting NIST in developing its affirmative purchasing program known as BioPreferred. The Final Rule that implements BioPreferred, Guidelines for Designating Biobased Products for Federal Procurement (7 CFR Part 2902), further mandates that before a product category can be designated by rule making for preferred purchasing, it must undergo BEES evaluation.

• One of the three “major advancements” in the release of LEED version 3 last spring is adoption of BEES Stakeholder Panel set of environmental weights for rigorous allocation of LEED points

• Draft ASTM E06.81 (Building Economics Subcommittee) appendix to Multiattribute Decision Analysis standard that passed subcommittee balloting in 2010 and that illustrates the technique’s use in developing BEES Stakeholder Panel set of environmental weights

Standards and Codes: Participation in ASTM Committee E60 on Sustainability by advising on proposed standards, voting on subcommittee and committee ballots, and recommending use of project outputs as they are developed.