ASHRAE Journal:
ASHRAE Journal presents.
Rachel Romero:
Hello, everyone. And thanks for listening to episode 25 of the ASHRAE Journal podcast. I am today's host, Rachel Romero. I'm a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. I have the pleasure of introducing our guest, Philip Fairey.
Philip Fairey:
Hello, how are you?
Rachel Romero:
And Dr. Theresa Weston.
Theresa Weston:
Hi, how are you doing?
Rachel Romero:
Great. Well, let's start off with some introductions. Do you each want to say hi?
Theresa Weston:
So I'm a building scientist. I work for my own company. I do consulting. But I worked doing materials, product and market development for 35 years at DuPont prior to leaving and starting my own company. I've been with ASHRAE about 25 years, maybe longer. I started in 1995 or 1996, so that may come out to be longer when you start averaging that out. So I started in ASHRAE. I was a researcher for DuPont for materials and doing materials development, primarily for residential construction, for energy efficiency, and moisture-durability of buildings.
And the work that I was doing involved the application of those materials. And so ASHRAE had some of the best research going on in that area, and so I joined. And I first focused on Technical Committees, 4.4 and 4.3, and was on the initial Development Committee for Standard 160, which is the hydrothermal modeling standard. And then got into 90.2 and some other, Residential Buildings Committee. And it went from there. But I really went in there because it was the applications for the materials that I was working on.
Rachel Romero:
Great. And Philip?
Philip Fairey:
Well, I have my own private sandbox, I guess is the best way to put it. I've been working at the Florida Solar Energy Center in building science, building energy efficiency, and renewable energy research since 1980. And I've been a member of ASHRAE—I became a member in 1987. So been in ASHRAE quite a while. My ASHRAE focus has basically been residential building science and energy efficiency. And then most recently, building decarbonization. I've been quite interested in that and think that's a very important area for us to focus on in the future.
I currently serve on the Residential Building Committee at ASHRAE, on SSPC 90.2 and SSPC 62.2. And so almost all of my ASHRAE activities have been in the arena of residential buildings.
Rachel Romero:
Great, thank you. Well, to get started with today's episode, we're going to cover the topic of residential buildings. And to start, everybody lives in a home. So this is a very relatable topic, and its importance in the world right now as we're looking at a lot of energy consumption and decarbonization of buildings. So that's why we're focusing on this topic today.
Can you tell me a little bit about the 90.2 Standard that you referred to, Terry?
Theresa Weston:
Yes. So 90.2 as a standard has been around for a number of years. But in 2018, we published a new version of it which had basically reimagined the standard as a leadership standard. And that was based on guidance that we received. Tech Council had put together a special advisory panel to look at what the best use of 90.2 as a standard would be, and along with other—the guidance of the committee itself, obviously. And we really aimed it at a leadership standard, so we wanted it to be designed. And at that point, it was residential, was actually one and two family dwellings only. It was really aimed at getting us on a faster route to that path to net-zero energy residential buildings. And we put a lot of work in there to try to make it, beyond this path, still be affordable, not the absolute minimum cost. Certainly not the absolute minimum first cost, but to get through there. And also, to look at the energy efficiency requirements involved in IEQ and other aspects of the building.
So we didn't want to make it into a green standard, like a 189 standard. We wanted to keep it the energy aspects of various things, but we wanted to incorporate the idea that people lived and spent most of their day in their houses. And certainly since COVID, we've been spending even more days in our houses. So it was really designed to put ASHRAE on a leadership track, not to be a minimum standard. And we worked very hard to use it that way. And I will let Philip give you some more information too. Philip was chair of 90.2, I was his vice chair, then I became chair. So we worked hand-in-glove for many years, well, for at least a few years to get this, 90.2 where it was.
I think one of the things that we did, a decision that we made early on to base it on an ERI type performance path and not a specific prescriptive path, although there is an appendix that tells you how to develop prescriptive paths. We wanted it to be flexible. And also, the ERI pathway is something that's really already accepted in the industry, so it has better uptake. And the ease of use or the ease of getting this actually adopted as a leadership standard, I think is helped by using that methodology.
Rachel Romero:
Great. Philip?
Philip Fairey:
Terry and I have very complimentary roles within 90.2. I basically do a lot of the building simulation analysis and things like that, that tell us how far we can get for how much money and everything else. And then Terry makes it happen. So that's the way—
Theresa Weston:
I think he's describing me as the pit bull.
Philip Fairey:
She's good at that too. But basically we started out with a goal to meet the SAP requirements for 90.2. And it was difficult at the start, but it got easier as we went along. The overall goal was to maximize the whole building energy performance, which could be cost-effective, and not worry very much about the minimum acceptable performance of buildings that are the purview of the energy codes. And we wanted it to be a performance standard rather than prescriptive standard. And so we basically chose to use the Energy Rating Index that was developed by the Residential Energy Services Network, which is called RESNET. And they have a standard, it's Standard 301, which describes exactly how these calculations are to be done.
And so 90.2 selected this energy rating index as the metric of energy performance that 90.2 would use. And we did whatever analysis was necessary to get to the kind of efficiencies that we wanted to get to. And at the time we put this together, we were basically charged by the SAP and the Standards Committee to achieve energy performance that was 50% better than the 2006 IECC. And it turns out that this Energy Rating Index is based on the 2006 IECC as its reference case. And so using that ERI fit well within the parameters of what the Standards Committee was asking us to do.
And so it turns out that the current 90.2 basically requires an energy performance that's about 60% better than this ERI reference case. And that ERI reference case is basically the 2006 IECC. So we have met our goal and maybe a little bit more in terms of what the SAP and Standards Committee was asking us to do. And currently the 90.2 Standard is between 20 and 30% better than the 2021 IECC. And so the 90.2 Standard is basically the strongest energy efficiency standard that exists in the country.
It's used by many different organizations. The Center for Energy Efficiency uses it for their buildings program. And it turns out that the RESNET Standard 301 also includes a Carbon Rating Index. And so we have recently moved to incorporate a Carbon Rating Index into the CRI and the index that's going to be required is 55, representing about 45% less emissions than the CRI reference case. And so that's where Standard 90.2 is now.
Theresa Weston:
Yeah. And there will be a new version published, probably towards the end of this year. It'll be five years in December, so it's time for the new version. We have addenda that we've passed along the way that are going to be incorporated, so we know at least some of the stuff that's going to be in there. We've got other addenda that are really close to the edge, and some are proceeding along. So we've got them at all phases of development. But one of the addenda that already passed was a change in title, purpose, and scope that was really important. For one thing, it took us to cover not just one and two family dwellings, but to go into all dwelling units.
I think home is home wherever you are, so it doesn't matter if you're living in an apartment or if you're living in a single family house, it's still your home. It's still where your kids and your pets and your family and your loved ones are. And so having the same level to try to develop that leadership level of energy efficiency across all of the different types of dwelling units. And based on that, we thought that was a really important thing. And then the other change in the title, purpose, and scope was to cover not just energy performance, but greenhouse gas emission performance, which led the way to the inclusion of the decarbonization index, the CRI index that Philip just mentioned.
So I think that change in title, purpose, and scope gave us a new lift for the next, what, leadership meant. So the leadership is not a single state, it's a pathway, it's a process. And so we're continuing on that as the committee. And as you can see, Philip and I were involved in the development of the 2018 version, which is the first leadership version. And we're still both on the committee now. We've continued pretty much intact with a lot of the same people. So the people are very, I don't know, we're committed. Or should be.
Rachel Romero:
Can you talk a little bit about how this standard is going to affect the industry and some of the impacts you hope to see?
Theresa Weston:
Well, I think being the first standard that has decarbonization in it, I think that will be an important benchmark for the industry. We are potential of being included as a stretch code. The numbers from 90.2 and the ERI pathway were included in the 2021 optional appendix in the IECC 2021 for a jurisdiction that wanted advanced energy performance. Looks like the 90.2 will be included as an actual reference standard into that appendix in the 2024, but that hasn't been published yet. Just looking forward into my crystal ball and having seen some of the draft stuff that's come through committee at IECC.
So I think continuing to push that energy efficiency level, and then also the decarbonization. And I think Philip, you can talk about the importance of decarbonization. That's in your bailiwick here.
Philip Fairey:
Well, I think decarbonization is probably what we're going to be looking at more and more in the future, because energy use is important, but decarbonization is perhaps even more important. And one of the things that we've learned from looking at how buildings cause carbon emissions, essentially is that net-zero energy is not net-zero carbon. And so we're actually going to have to go further to achieve net-zero carbon than we are to achieve net-zero energy. And as Terry was just talking about the 2021 IECC appendix RC, it's called, is the appendix on zero energy buildings. And basically what that appendix does is it lays out how you get to zero energy with respect to the IECC.
And the first thing you have to achieve is a level of efficiency that is actually exactly the same level of efficiency that is called out in 90.2. And so the energy rating indexes that are required in order to achieve the moniker of zero energy building in the IECC are exactly the same as the ERIs that are required by 90.2. And so that is, in fact, one of the places where 90.2 has made a difference in standard energy codes, particularly those that are beyond minimum codes. And so 90.2 has been instrumental there, I think.
And as far as the carbon index goes, we've set a standard, the first standard that I'm aware of in the country for carbon performance in residential building compliance or standards. And that is a carbon performance that's at almost half of what the reference case carbon performance is. And so I think that's a good place to start, but we've looked at some others. And if you add, for example, renewable energy, then that carbon performance is going to be even better. And we actually have in one of the addenda to 90.2, which looks at renewable energy and getting to zero, if you will, that carbon index is actually reduced to 45, from 55 to 45, for buildings that contain PV systems on their roofs.
And so we're moving along this path and we're just now starting. And I think it's going to continue to become more and more important as we move along.
Rachel Romero:
We do know that energy efficiency and decarbonization are high priorities in residential, and are going to continue to be as we try to achieve some aggressive climate goals. We also know that there are some other issues in residential, including indoor environmental quality and resilience. Do you guys want to talk a little bit about that?
Philip Fairey:
Terry, you want to talk some, or you want me to hit on this?
Theresa Weston:
You can go ahead and talk about IEQ. I think certainly IEQ is, with all of the smoke from the fires we—I missed it because I was out of the country, actually. So I was happy to miss it.
Philip Fairey:
Well, I missed it because I'm in Florida.
Theresa Weston:
I was looking at home and seeing how bad the air quality was. But Phil, why don't you talk about IEQ and then I'll follow up on some resilience. I think the issue is that a well-run building, a well-maintained building, and a well-built building, from an enclosure and systems standpoint, gives you energy efficiency, and in working with a clean grid will give you decarbonization. But it also enables IEQ and resilience. So it's the backbone of some parts of resilience, and in some parts of resilience, it just, it's a well-built building.
Philip Fairey:
Let me say a little bit about background. About two years ago, 90.2 decided that it would probably be a good idea to have a collaborative working group with 62.2. 62.2 is the ventilation standard for ASHRAE residential buildings. And it is the indoor air quality standard for ASHRAE, but it's a minimum standard. It's not a leadership standard like ASHRAE 90.2 is. And so ASHRAE 90.2 decided to contact the people in 62.2 and see if they would be interested in putting together a working group. And they were. And we were able to get Steve Emmerich, who is a past chairman of 62.2, and a member of NIST, the chair of that working group. And basically, we were able to bring the expertise that's available in the 62.2 committee to work on bringing best practice IEQ systems to 90.2.
And to date, the working group has accomplished a number of things that are probably pretty important. One of them is that the new addenda, essentially, to 90.2 will require that all of the requirements of 62.2 be met in order to comply with 90.2, not just the mechanical ventilation rate. They also, that addenda upgrades all ducted forced-air system filtrations to MERV 13 from MERV 8. And so that's a big change. It requires that electronic air cleaners meet UL Standard 2998. It requires that rate on dwellings meet Indoor airPLUS Version 2, New Construction Specifications. And it also has a range hood capture efficiency of 50% as it's tested in accordance with ASTM Standard E3087.
And so those are big best practice procedures that are not incorporated in 62.2, but are going to be incorporated in 90.2 as a leadership standard. These are not minimum performance standards. These are best practice performance criteria that we've been able to get 62.2 to help us put into 90.2.
Rachel Romero:
Well, that filtration will definitely serve us when we have these poor air quality events continuing forward. So that's definitely leadership and responding to meet current climate, for sure.
Theresa Weston:
Yeah. I think the other thing that we need to look at in terms of resilience, which is an area that I've been working in recently, is the concept of passive survivability and the fact that we are getting more and more power outages. So if you have an energy efficient building or a high performance building that can maintain a temperature inside for a longer period of time, you can get through that power outage hump. Which can be three days, it can be three hours, it can be three weeks. I've had, up to now, a week and a half without power, and it's uncomfortable. I mean. So LEED has put in a passive survivability and backup during power distributions.
So the question is whether you want to look at things in terms of passive survivability, or you just want to go to a bare minimum of the amount of power that you need to keep going if you have solar or battery backup to keep a minimum level of mechanical ventilation going, to keep your air cleaners going if you're in that sort of a thing. Or critical medical equipment, particularly if you're a senior community that has oxygen concentrators or something that need to keep charging their batteries. So the better you have in terms of your base building, the better you're going to be able to go down to a manageable level of power that's needed just to keep going through. And you can maybe get by on some of the battery backup.
We don't have any specific requirements on that, but I think it's a new metric we're going to start looking at. Because whereas the decarbonization and the work is going to hopefully get us to where we want to be, with the issue of climate change and get through the decarbonization, we're already starting to see the effects. And so we also have to start dealing with those effects while we're doing the decarbonization forward. And I think we're in a good position to do that. We don't have anything on resilience yet in 90.2, but it's an important aspect. And some of the requirements in 90.2 will lead you to a more protected building in terms of power outages.
Philip Fairey:
The other place that 90.2 is trying to look fairly closely is in the area of retrofits, because there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that the existing building stock is significantly better than it currently is. And so 90.2 has been putting a good bit of effort into trying to come up with better standards for how you might retrofit a building. And they've been working very closely with other organizations around the country that are concerned about this. And so we've had presentations by the New Building Institute and other institutes that are very concerned about retrofits in residential buildings. And hopefully we'll move towards having a chapter on retrofits in residential buildings that'll be meaningful.
Rachel Romero:
Great. Well, retrofits definitely can be challenging, and there's a lot of opportunity, for sure, in the residential building market for efficiency and electrification and decarbonization there.
So you both mentioned the Residential Buildings Committee. Can you each share how you have been involved at ASHRAE within the residential sphere? You've talked about being on these committees, but do you want to talk about the other areas you've been involved and how this cuts across the organization? Maybe Philip, you want to start?
Philip Fairey:
Well, I've been involved with the Residential Building Committee, essentially since before it was a residential building committee. I was on the original ad hoc committee, Presidential Ad Hoc Committee that addressed whether or not there was a need for a residential building committee. And I was on the committee after the committee was formed for the first year, and then I rotated off, and then last year I got rotated back on.
And so the Residential Building Committee has come a long way since it was first started, I can say that for certain. Because when it first started, it wasn't nearly as rigorous and as formal and formative as it is currently, and it's come a long way. And last year, the Residential Building Committee gave their most prestigious award to Terry, and so she's been involved in it for a long time as well. And was, in fact, I think you were on when I was on. But you stayed on and I moved off, I believe, Terry.
Theresa Weston:
Yeah, I was on the Presidential Ad Hoc with Philip, and I continued on the committee for a number of years. I rolled off, and Philip rolled on. We actually do like to serve together, but just the way it worked. I'm still involved with them. I am working with them on updating some of the distinguished lecturer talks on residential out there as well. But I think we often think of residential because it's what we see every day. We think about it as being simpler and not as complicated as commercial buildings. Certainly they're smaller and the systems are smaller, so sometimes it gets a little short shrift.
But the modeling and the technology is just as complicated and just as scientific and technical. And it's something that we're seeing and being around every day. And I've been in market and product development, and developing materials primarily for residential. They're for residential and commercial buildings as well. But you get a lot of pleasure out of just knowing everybody potentially can profit from you being around and the work you're doing.
So residential, historically, has not been as focused on within ASHRAE, but I think people are starting to realize that it's really important to our national goals. I mean, residential, just on energy efficiency is just under a quarter of the energy used. So the decarbonization level goes along with that. I mean, they tend to go together. It may be more of our decarbonization amounts, percentage-wise. So we need to have residential if we're going to meet the international goals. There are some countries where residential is 40% of the energy used by the country.
So if you don't have it, you have a serious hole in being able to meet your goals. So that, I think that's the main thing. It's important, but it goes back to what we said at the beginning, which is we all go home. It's where we live. It's also, financially, the biggest investment most of us make in our life, is if we buy a house.
Philip Fairey:
So ASHRAE is here to help you sleep better at night.
Theresa Weston:
It is. We actually have the work going on within ASHRAE. An article recently came out on that.
Philip Fairey:
Absolutely. Came out of the Residential—
Theresa Weston:
Building Committee.
Philip Fairey:
—Building Committee.
Rachel Romero:
Can someone elaborate why the ad hoc was formed and then the Residential Buildings Committee? What were some of the priorities at the time, and why it's continued to persist?
Theresa Weston:
Well, it came out of a presidential appointment, and it was really because ASHRAE wanted to explore the fact that it was not as active in what residential was considered. And I think the first thing we tried to take on, we had a number of stakeholder groups under the ad hoc, and then we used the feedback from the stakeholder group that ultimately came into establishing a society-level committee on this. But I think the idea, one of the things that I think was missing at first is that when people said, residential, everybody thought, single family homes. But they weren't thinking that residential encompassed all of the multifamily buildings out there everywhere. And internationally, it encompassed all of that.
So I think ASHRAE wanted to look at, where are we missing? This is a big sector of energy usage, it's a big sector of carbon. Where are we missing it? And then we went through the stakeholder to really look at what ASHRAE provides and what ASHRAE could provide, and where the holes were in the industry. Because one of the things about, I think the technical developments within the industry, is say, there are less conferences that involve residential buildings than there are commercial buildings. There seems to be less technical infrastructure for that. And I think ASHRAE is starting to fill that hole with the activities of the Residential Building Committees and the other committees that work with them.
Rachel Romero:
Yeah. Philip, can you talk a little bit about what the Residential Buildings Committee is doing today?
Philip Fairey:
Well, it's very, very interested in some of the things that we've been talking about today with respect to decarbonization. And it's also being approached—one of the things I find interesting is that it's actually being asked to weigh in on issues that used to be essentially all commercial building. And I'll give you an example of that. We were recently approached as a committee to support an effort with Standards Committee to establish a Residential HVAC Committee that is separate from the Commercial HVAC Committee. And so that kind of is an indication that the Residential Building Committee is becoming more functional and more important to ASHRAE's direction moving forward.
And I think, Rachel, you can speak to the Residential Building Committee probably as well as either one of us because you're a member and—
Theresa Weston:
You've been on it too.
Rachel Romero:
Yeah. Yeah. It's been great to see the committee work on bringing the experts together across ASHRAE on residential topics. Really hone in on, what are the key topic areas within our industry that are hampering the advancement of the residential buildings industry? What are we seeing in our homes, such as wildfire risk? You do sleep in your home many hours a night, so looking at that. And also, finally to recognition of residential industry champions that have been promoting the cause of residential and doing good work in that sphere. So lots of good work going on at the Residential Buildings Committee within ASHRAE.
Theresa Weston:
Yeah, I think also with COVID and we all moved back and did work from home. I mean, that was not in our plans. We did not start COVID to promote residential buildings, so I don't want to want anybody to think that. But I think with everybody doing the work from home for a year or two, and I think they started to appreciate that they needed to know how their homes worked a little bit better as an entity. And the smart home revolution or whatever, that we're all connected. I think that has actually made us appreciate the fact that the residential needs to work as a system. The residential building needs to work as a system. It's not just, oh, another building, sort of thing.
I do think that we should recognize, though, not as part of the Residential Buildings Committee specifically, there was a residential part of the COVID task force under ASHRAE. And I think they did a lot of really good work under that COVID task force for residential as well. I wasn't on that. I've gone through the collateral that they produced and they did an excellent job under that. Philip, I don't know if you were on that. Were you on that?
Philip Fairey:
I was not. Max was on it, from 62.2. And it was chaired by Bill Bahnfleth, who actually was the president of ASHRAE when the Presidential Ad Hoc Residential Building Work Group was formed. And so he's obviously quite a residential advocate.
Rachel Romero:
Great. Well, as we conclude, is there anything else that you'd like to share? Philip, start with you.
Philip Fairey:
No, I just am very appreciative of the fact that ASHRAE has given me a place to ply my trade, I guess I would say, in a way that that is beneficial to others.
Rachel Romero:
Great, thanks. Terry?
Theresa Weston:
I'd like to thank you for setting this up and allowing us to chat for a little under an hour, I guess, to just talk about things. It's nice to look back at the residential buildings and the work that we did on the different Standards Committees and go, "Hey, yeah. We did a good job." We don't reflect enough backwards. And so it's been nice to take a little bit of a trip down memory lane and talk about some of these things and say, "Yeah, we did that, Phil. Philip, we did that."
Philip Fairey:
Yes, we did.
Theresa Weston:
That was us. That was us. Yeah.
Rachel Romero:
And thank you. Thank you for your ASHRAE service. Each member definitely makes up this organization and our power as a community to really affect change and meet these global goals for energy efficiency and decarbonization moving forward. So thank you.
With that, Philip and Terry, thank you so much for joining us today. And to our listeners, thanks for listening to the ASHRAE Journal podcast. I'm Rachel Romero.
Theresa Weston:
Bye.
Philip Fairey:
Bye-bye.
ASHRAE Journal:
The ASHRAE Journal podcast team is editor, Drew Champlin; managing editor, Kelly Barraza; producer and associate editor, Chadd Jones; assistant editor, Kaitlyn Baich; associate editor, Tani Palefski; creative designer, Teresa Carboni; and technical editor, Rebecca Matyasovski. Copyright ASHRAE. The views expressed in this podcast are those of individuals only and not of ASHRAE, its sponsors, or advertisers. Please refer to ashrae.org/podcast for the full disclaimer.