IES Blog

It’s true that the U.S. government’s investments in green technology haven’t always paid off – just ask those who picked up office furniture, industrial supplies and T-shirts last month at the Solyndra bankruptcy auction. But that doesn’t mean additional funding is gone, especially with President Obama and former President Clinton’s recently-announced plan to invest $4 billion in energy upgrades to public and private buildings nationwide.

A recent article on Politico.com explains the duo has teamed up for the latest installment of President Obama’s “Better Building Initiative.” Government officials say the plan, which is meant to spur job growth and energy efficiency, avoids many of the problems of previous loan guarantees. How? By relying on both government and private investments; $2 billion from each over the next two years, to be exact. But what’s perhaps most interesting about this plan is what it says about the United States’ dedication to green technology and more energy-efficient commercial and industrial buildings.

Obama [was] joined by Clinton during a Washington, D.C., event Friday to sign a memorandum for a minimum of a $2 billion commitment from federal agencies over the next 24 months. The money will go toward hiring contractors to perform energy efficiency and other green upgrades at federal facilities. There also will be a $2 billion private-sector commitment, covering up to 1.6 billion square feet of commercial and independent property and involving roughly 300 manufacturing plants.

In this case, the U.S. government’s decision not to dwell on past mistakes certainly appears to be a good thing for the green building and energy efficiency industries at large. Here’s looking to a greener and more efficient future!

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Tags:Building, energy, Green, Obama, US Government, Washington

If I was a betting woman…

I’d bet on clean energy.

Las Vegas hosted the National Clean Energy Summit 4.0 last month, and none other than Vice President Joe Biden himself was there to pledge allegiance to green cars, photovoltaics and wind turbines. He seemed sincerely passionate about the need for a renewable energy revolution. The event was held at the LEED Gold-certified Aria CityCenter, which looks like any other casino resort, but is far from it. What you can’t see is the waste heat co-generation facility, the water conservation efforts, the fresh air circulation or the electric vehicle charging station. Yes, at a casino. In Las Vegas. CityCenter’s commitment to the environment remarkably demonstrates that a community can be both beautiful and sustainable.

“Imagine if the U.S. was the first country able to make solar power that is cheaper than coal. Imagine lithium-ion batteries made here that are capable of carrying an electric car 300 miles or more. Imagine being able to capture waste power from factories and vehicles and convert it to electricity. I think we’re going to see stunning breakthroughs.”
-Joe Biden

These innovations will help the U.S. by spending less on imported oil from other nations, focusing our efforts to continue pushing the envelope when it comes to clean technologies.

There was also a panel presentation. Newly elected Nevada governor Brian Sandoval said that the state has made a commitment to use 20 percent renewable energy by 2020. If other states would piggy back off Nevada’s commitment, we would be on our way to a more sustainable America. (And well before the Architecture 2030 deadline, too!)

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Tags:Environment, event, Las Vegas, LEED, Renewables, Sustainability

What’s the equivalent of a Prius when it comes to green buildings? Well, the answer might be The Bullitt Center in Seattle, Washington. It just broke ground last week, and aims to be the first commercial building designed to carry its own environmental weight.

What does that mean – “carry its own environmental weight”?

It means that this building is taking sustainable design to the next level. This building is designed to produce as much energy as it consumes. To provide its own water, its own sewage. If you want to drive to work, you’ll have to find an alternate parking lot. Parking at The Bullitt Center will be reserved for bikes only.

You might be scratching your head and thinking this is crazy. But this is what sustainable design is all about!

Denis Hayes, president and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation, was quoted in a Seattle Times feature about the project, saying this is what we should have been doing 5, 10 years ago.

Conventional office buildings are getting greener, Hayes acknowledges. Many developers are designing their projects with green features to qualify for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, then marketing that label prominently.

But change isn’t happening fast enough to respond to climate change and other looming environmental problems, he said: “If the world had three or four centuries to address these challenges, we would be right on track.”

So what does this mean for our industry? This will force programs like LEED to take it to the next level, and for architects and designers to really incorporate sustainable design techniques into projects.

Building owners are going to be asking for these features in their buildings. And it’s possible, we just need to keep at it.

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Tags:Architects, Building, climate, design, leadership, LEED, office, Seattle, Sustainability

A few weeks back, the Boston Chapter of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) held a speaker session to investigate the topic of weather and building simulation. This seminar was Part 2 of the IBPSA’s “Big Uglies”. The “Big Uglies” represent four of the major unknowns in energy modelling: Occupancy, Plug Loads, Weather and Infiltration.

The group discussion was designed to tackle the impact of weather on building simulation and covered the following topics – “options for obtaining weather files for building simulation, the affects of weather on simulation results, future weather files, and related practices”.

This event caught my eye as climate and its impact on performance analysis has been on the IES agenda for a while now. Richard Quincey, Technical Director at IES explains, “To be truly sustainable, a building needs to last in excess of 100 years, and current design regulations and sustainability rating systems only require you to design against weather data that represents at best the next decade or so. Sustainable designs really need to make some assessment of the impact of climate change on determining built form suitability for the long term.”

With climate change becoming a global reality, why risk the long term performance of your building by ignoring it? A building may perform well today but it may not be able to adapt with the impact of future adverse weather conditions.

In January we teamed up with the University of Exeter to assist with their Prometheus Weather Files project. The weather files are available in .epw format for 35 locations around the UK for the 2030s, 2050s and 2080s across both high and medium emissions scenarios. The files are fully compatible with the IESVE allowing designers, architects and engineers to future weather-proof buildings and undertake comparisons between performance today and in future decades. The files are free and can be downloaded from our website.

Richard Quincey (IES) and Dr. Tristan Kershaw of the University of Exeter presented the project at this year’s Ecobuild. Highlights from the session are available in the video below.

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Tags:Boston, Building, climate, IES, Modeling, Sustainability, weather files

We’re proud to call San Francisco home to one of our North American offices. We’ve always loved the unique architecture and the unparalleled atmosphere of the city by the Bay.

But now there’s another reason for us to love this city a little more. San Francisco has been named the ‘greenest city in America’ by the Economist Intelligence Unit as part of the ongoing Green Cities Index research project.

The chart below shows the areas in which the 27 cities were evaluated.

Looking at the various facets these cities were judged on, I can’t help but smile. Every day, I work with companies to help design low-energy, high performance buildings utilizing our performance analysis products. To see that it’s making a difference in the output of large commercial buildings in some of the greatest cities in this country makes me realize that what we are doing is not just about designing buildings to be pretty. It’s about reducing energy consumption and making buildings as efficient as possible for the long haul. Large commercial buildings in these cities are going to be around for many, many years to come, and it’s our goal to build them to not only last that long, but to be icons of the future of building.

This is an exciting time for our industry! We can’t wait to see all the cities on the list (and more) with scores in the 80s.

If you’re interested in all the specifics, the full report can be downloaded here.

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Tags:Green Building, IES, San Francisco

Seattle Space Needle

When you think about the “big cities” in the U.S., and the ones that are usually at the forefront of trends, you usually think of New York City and San Francisco.

But Seattle?

According to a recent article in Sustainable Industries, Seattle is proving to be a powerhouse when it comes to energy efficiency in commercial buildings.

“Seattle’s buildings provide one of the greatest opportunities to generate energy savings and boost economic development for the city,” Department of Planning and Development director Diane Sugimura said in a news release. “This new program will help building owners take a key step toward increasing building energy efficiency, which, in turn, helps lower operating costs, makes buildings more competitive and creates good local jobs.”

That’s what it’s all about after all. Increasing energy efficiency within buildings for a truly sustainable future. The savings in terms of money is a bonus.

Next week, Seattle Energy & Design Roundtable will be hosting an event at the US Bank Center Building. Our U.S. Business Development Manager Nathan Kegel will be discussing VE-Gaia from early phase design all the way through project completion and submittal to rating authorities. Dan Munn and Matt Glassman from DLR Group will then present on how they used IES VE for early phase design and highlight training programs used at DLR to help architects reach the Architecture 2030 goals.

Speaking of Architecture 2030, the Architecture 2030 District mentioned in the article certainly sounds like a model for success. I’ll be interested to see the successes there.

So we’ll be keeping our eyes on Seattle and the many other cities developing and implementing energy efficiency standards for commercial buildings. It’s an exciting time for sustainable design!

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Tags:Architecture 2030, DLR, IES VE, Seattle, Sustainability

When I was at the airport recently, almost every billboard seemed to be hijacked by the Microsoft marketing team promoting “Azure” and CloudPower (their latest Cloud Computing tech). You’d think it was something new! So what is “The Cloud?” Well, it’s just a term which means that you handle data and software somewhere other than your computer, via the internet. All the work goes on in some servers in California, Pune, Beijing or anywhere else except your computer in front of you. A web page provides the interface for this to happen.

Why is “The Cloud” such big news?
Having other people’s servers do all the work for you from a web page has been going on for years. When the two guys who started Google launched the first version of their search engine in 1998, it was one of the first proper Cloud Computing applications. The user typed some text into a web page, which was then transferred to a few computers sitting in a little garage in Palo Alto, which crunched the search numbers and posted the results back on the same page. In 2007, just nine years later it was estimated that Google had approximately 1 million servers. Why did it get so big so fast ? Simply because they worked out the fastest way of searching the internet, and then integrated low-cost advertising when it became really popular. Advertising revenue was $30billion last year. It’s the most stratospheric rise in computing history.

What can it do for me?
Web pages for cloud computing apps have been springing up across the web for some time. Many of you get mail through Gmail. Google Docs is starting to rival Microsoft Office for personal document editing. In some ways it’s better – because it’s on The Cloud, you can work on your document with friends together, store different versions of it, and know that someone else looks after it and keeps a copy. A couple of other really neat applications are free photo editing (www.pixlr.com) and free movie editing (http://jaycut.com/). The whole approach keeps the cost of software down, and you don’t have to install it either.

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Tags:cloud, internet, technology

As a keen live music lover I spend a lot of my time going to gigs and festivals throughout the year. A lot of the bands I see in Glasgow are usually stopping off as part of a UK tour or on some occasions, a worldwide jaunt. It got me thinking about the huge environmental footprint that could be left behind by tours – flights, a convoy of busses for crew and equipment, venue emissions and gig goers waste. Safe to say a pretty big footprint eh? I decided to take a look and see if there are any bands or records labels out there that are actively challenging this issue and coming up with ways of reducing their tour’s impact on the environment. It didn’t take me long to find some positive and creative action being taken…

The Dave Matthews band collaborated with FilterForGood in order to reduce the amount of bottled water waste on their 2010 tour. They provided refilling water stations for their fans to help reduce the large quantities of bottled water waste that makes its way into landfills and our waterways. As part of their commitment to the environment they also provided recycling stations in the parking lots, encouraged fans to carpool to gigs, used sustainable biodiesel and offset the tours carbon emissions.

The Black Eyed Peas tour took a creative approach to promoting recycling waste on their worldwide tour. The waste that was accumulated at each venue was then recycled into official merchandise and on average venues reported an increase of 20-50% in recycling taking place on the night of a Black Eyed Pea’s show.

The Stowaways are a Canadian band who are setting out on a “sustainable music tour” this summer, as they will be travelling from gig to gig along the west coast by sailboat. This is a great idea to cut down their tour footprint and an even greater PR opportunity for the band.

My final and favourite example of a band going on a “green tour” has got to be the Ginger Ninjas. These guys are an American rock n roll band who will travel by bicycle across the US and Europe on their “Pleasant Revolution Tour”. They will also be playing on stages that are completely bicycle powered.

Could you imagine how many bicycles it would take to power U2’s stage? Answers on postcards please.

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Tags:Environment, music, recycle, Sustainability

I got the red eye out of Glasgow to arrive at this year’s Ecobuild exhibition a few hours out of its opening, and still feeling guilty about taking the plane instead of the train I entered the new location of ExCel right next to City airport (there really was no contest in ease of travel!).  The anticipation in the air was palatable!  What would this year bring?  Would the move to ExCel work?  Would the visitors come?

Having attended a similar show Greenbuild in Chicago in November last year for a disappointing 28,000 visitors (down from the estimated 40,000) we had no idea what to expect here…

…and WOW what a difference – in all honesty last year’s Ecobuild had felt stale and just a bit depressing, even with the 41,000 visitors – exactly like the market in general.  But this year spring was in the air and optimism abounded.

Ecobuild has finally arrived – It has been called “the world’s biggest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment and the UK’s largest construction event of any kind” for a while now.  However, this year it well and truly lived up to that expectation.  Plus, the international element was noticeably out in force with visitors and exhibitors from all over Europe and the rest of the world (maybe the close proximity to an international airport helped…).

In addition, the demise of Interbuild aka BEST was announced just prior to the show (for all you non-UK readers this was the UK construction industry’s behemoth show for many years).  The obvious conclusion being that our construction industry is all about sustainability now – it’s the norm!  An interesting problem for Ecobuild going forward will be how it keeps this specialisation and sustainable building innovation at the core of the show, while embracing the great news that the industry has well and truly changed its outlook over the last 5 years.  Back then the show only had 500 visitors, this year an estimated 50,000 came through the doors!

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view), I was stuck on our stand for most of the show helping to speak to all you lovely performance analysis enthusiasts, and consequently I didn’t make it too much of the show, let alone any of the seminars.  My lifesaver was @PazzaArchitect who did a sterling job of keeping the #Ecobuild twitterarti up to date with live session tweeting.  Plus GAB (Green Architecture & Building) Report has undertaken a fantastic report of the show floor.  Check out all tweets with the #Ecobuild hastag for a review of the show and loads of funny pics ranging from the Dulux Dog to the Mr S&G Superhero at WhatTheHastag.

So what did we get up to then?  Interest from the non-converted IESVEers was definitely up, especially in the architect arena with many seeking us out from among the 1,300 exhibitors.  And for them we were offering a 2 for 1 special offer on our newly revamped VE-Gaia tool.  If you’ve ever wanted to incorporate sustainable performance analysis into your design process right from the beginning this is the tool for you.  Climate, LZCT, Energy, Daylight and much more…

Then on the UK Building Regulations side we launched our unique new guided VE-Navigator for UK Compliance 2010 for new-build compliance and EPC creation.  Visitors were able to discover the time saving, facilitation and QA functionality it offers at live demos on stand.  Plus, three new software packs from as little as £320 per quarter we launched to offer our customers a range of flexible DSM/SBEM & EPC solutions.

Our very own David McEwan was recorded talking about our presence at the show and plans over the coming year – listen to it here on Audioboo.

Then our very own IES Faculty educational series of free events was launched which will cover a wide range of performance analysis topics – book now if you want to attend places are filling up fast!!  The first session is a Modelling Masterclass scheduled for the 21st March in London. 

Plus Richard Qunicey of IES and Tristan Kershaw from the University of Exeter’s Centre for Energy and the Environment presented at the UKGBC Big Tent on the village Green on ‘Is Adaptation our industry blind spot?’ Can climate data help buildings cope over the long term?  The Prometheus research project was covered to analyze how weather data lets you assess a building’s ability to adapt to climate change.

Phew what a busy week!!  Finally thanks you to all for your interest, enthusiasm, wit and inquisitive nature.  See you there next year!!

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Tags:Architects, Building, education, Greenbuild, IES, software, Sustainability, VE-Gaia

After weeks of anticipation and around 250 entries, we are happy to announce the winner of our Global VE-Gaia contest. The envelope please…

(Drum roll followed by dramatic pause)

And the winner is…Brian J Wolfe of HKS!

With the quality of entries extremely high, Brian managed to impress us with his answer detailing how he felt “VE-Gaia = Sustainable Projects.”  Brian went on to explain the early sustainable analysis role VE-Gaia could play at HKS within its DesignGreen team, which he is part of.  His detailed and lengthy answer showed he really understood how VE-Gaia could make a difference in his day-to-day work, and that he was ready to get going using its features on real-life projects as soon as he could.  I’ve included some extracts from his entry below…

“IES’s program VE-Gaia seems to meet the wish of seamless workflow by providing many features. One of the most beneficial features is the Energy/Carbon Simulation. In the discussions of what is important to reducing Green House Gas (GHG), some groups say that project teams should focus on reducing the energy demand. Others say it’s more important to focus on reducing the carbon footprint. The fact of the matter is that this is similar to, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” 

“I believe that the IES feature Energy/Carbon Simulation would be of great benefit to design teams. By allowing teams to see how their design decisions can reduce the project’s carbon footprint, teams can better understand the project’s impact when compared to reduction of vehicle use, trees cut, etc. The reduction of the carbon footprint in turn translates to a more energy efficient building, hence energy efficiency.”

“By being able to determine the affects of the design decisions, teams will be able to proceed with confidence that the project is a quality project. For society to continue to enjoy the valuable resources nature offers and NOT compromise its future, project teams must develop sustainable projects. With so many different factors that contribute to providing a project that is sustainable, teams need assistance. Any program that allows the team to work seamlessly through design and sustainable analysis will not only provide that team a distinct advantage, but the team will have the satisfaction of knowing that it has done its part in seeing that the next generation’s future is not compromised.”

Brian has won a one-year stand-alone license for VE-Gaia, the company’s revolutionary architectural green building analysis tool.  He will also receive a three-part training course for two people, with a certified IES consultant. The total grand prize is valued at $1,840 / £1,200.

Brian was officially announced the winner at our booth at Greenbuild in Chicago yesterday.

Many thanks to all who participated in our contest.  The feedback you provided us is priceless.  As always, we remain committed to improving our products every day to better serve you, and we also hope that you will continue to help us help you make our world greener, one project at a time.

Once again, thanks to all the contest participants and congratulations Brian!

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Tags:competition, Greenbuild, software, Twitter, VE-Gaia, winner