Residential GHG Reduction Plan

Our ENVR 116: Getting to Carbon Neutrality class is finally over and the grades submitted. The class ended with student presentations on May 10, 2010. The presentations were amazingly good, summarizing the students' original greenhouse gas reduction plans. Most students chose to develop plans for their homes, while a few focused on businesses. The first presentation of the night from the local students was by Steve O'Flarity, who drove up from Connecticut. Steve set a goal of reducing his household GHG emissions for his 3,000 square foot home by 30% by 2014 from a 2010 baseline. He calculated his family of 4 emitted 28 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2010, including most Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and the Scope 3 emissions from air travel. He identified a number of GHG mitigation opportunities for his household including driving less, replacing their furnace, and switching from an electric clothes dryer to a new gas dryer (adding to his Scope 1 emissions but reducing his overall emissions). Great job Steve and thanks for letting me share your presentation, though I'll have to wait to attach the file until I can access my FTP site from my home computer.

Clark University Presentation

On Tuesday, March 16th, I was a guest lecturer in Professor Will O'Brien's MGMT 252 Green Business Management course at Clark University. The course is supposed to introduce the concept and practice of sustainable development and energy management as they related to local small business, local government, local non-profits, and local citizens. I came in and spoke about how Harvard University was embracing sustainability. My presentation was similar to others I've given on the subject, though updated somewhat. The presentation can be found here.

Professor O'Brien taught a Sustainable Business course as part of the Masters of Science in Facilities Management program I'm pursuing through Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The sustainability plan found here is one my group did for Taza Chocolate as part of that class.

LEED for Sub Training

On November 5th, the Massachusetts Membership Forum (soon to be MA USGBC Chapter) hosted a "LEED for Subs" workshop. Suffolk and Moriarty were the workshop sponsors, NSTAR was the venue host, Ver-Tex the lunch sponsor, and Consigli and Erland the table sponsors. The event had more than 120 people in attendance, mostly sub-contractors. It was very well received, with lots of positive comments in the session reviews. I opened the 1/2 day event with a presentation on the following:


– Why Build Green
– US Green Building Council
– LEED® Rating Systems
– LEED® 2009
– LEED® Credit Categories

The presentation is attached. Bill Holland followed with a presentation on the Materials and Resources credits and Marie Nolan with one on the Indoor Environmental Quality credits. Jim Newman closed the session talking about green building resources.

Calculating Energy Savings

On Friday, I presented a brown bag lunch presentation on Calculating Energy Savings to the OFS staff. The presentation started with a look at some spreadsheets I'd created to quickly calculate the savings from two easy energy retrofits... reduced pressure drop air filters and premium efficiency motors. The Excel file had pages started for calculating a number of other types of savings, but wasn't quite ready to share at this time. Next we went over part of the attached Power Point starting with how to calculate lighting fixture requirement using the Lumen Method (the agenda on the second page of the presentation was never changed to represent the actual presentation). We then went over the Fundamental Law of Illumination and how fixture distance affects illuminance. The presentation continued with an explanation of energy models and how they work. We then finished by looking at an eQUEST version 3.62 model for one of the undergraduate houses and quickly reviewing some of the inputs and summary reports. About 6 people attended.

Integrated Design and LEED

On Monday, September 14th, I taught my first full lecture at our ENVR 119, Green Building Design, Construction and Operations class at the Harvard Extension School. The class was well attended (about 40 people in the classroom) and was watched by many more live via the web. For the first time we had an online chat room up so that people could talk to each other during the class and ask questions, which teaching fellow Andrea Ruedy Trimble would read aloud. We know at least one student watched from Brazil and we expect the class from Tsinghua University in China to watch the recorded version. Tsinghua University has partnered with the Extension School to offer our class at their University, watching our lectures and using our assignments, but grading their own papers and supplementing our lectures with their own introductions.

The class on Monday was extended to three hours instead of its usual two hour format. For the first hour, I spoke about Integrated Design. The class asked lots of good questions and we had excellent participation. Rafal Shurma spoke next for one hour about international green building rating systems. It always makes me smile to see BREAM for Prisons as a formal rating system. Finally, I spoke from 9:30 to 10:30 pm about the US Green Building Council's LEED Rating System. I talked about the overall structure of the LEED system and then walked through the specific environmental attributes identified in the 2009 version of LEED for New Construction and Major Renovations. We also announced a study group for students wanting to prepare for the LEED Green Associate examination. A surprisingly high percentage of students stayed in class until 10:30 and about 5 even stuck around to ask questions. Copies of both of my presentations are attached.

Green Building Class

On Monday, we had the first ENVR 119, Green Building Design, Construction, and Operations class of the year. So far there are more than 75 students signed up for the class that is offered live and via distance learning. This is the fourth time we've offered ENVR 119. Jack Spengler (pictured above right) provided the course introduction as well as a lecture on the impacts of buildings on the environment and human health. Dr. Spengler is the Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation in the Exposure, Epidemiology & Risk Program, within the Department of Environmental Health, at Harvard University's School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts and is a world renowned expert on indoor air quality. Andrea Trimble followed with a review of the course syllabus and schedule. Andrea (pictured to the left) is manager of the Harvard Office for Sustainability Green Building Services. Rafal Schurma and Agnes Vorbrodt-Schurma introduced themselves and spoke briefly about their experiences starting the Polish Green Building Council. I followed with a very brief introduction of myself and a quick presentation on integrated design and the design and construction process (time was limited). A copy of my presentation can be found below.

Talk at GSD

Our director and I guest lectured on Wednesday this week in the Planning and Building Sustainable Campuses executive education class at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. About 20 students attended the class, which was organized by Dan Kenney and a team from Sasaki Architects. My part of the lecture is attached. I'd taken the group on a tour of Rockefeller Hall (soon to be LEED NC v2.2 Gold) to the same group on Tuesday. Roy Lauridsen of the Harvard Divinity School met us at the building and lead the tour.

SCUP Conference

Last week at the SCUP conference we presented on the Hamilton Hall project from the Business School. The architect, Nancy Goodwin of Finegold Alexander + Associates, started by introducing the project and it's LEED gold rating. Ken Beck, project engineer from BLW Engineers, followed with a talk about the building's controls, which included the first use of occupancy sensors to control thermostats on campus. I followed with a look at how the Buisiness School and the University leveraged the initial successes from Hamilton Hall into bigger successesses in future projects and eventually into campus-wide policy changes. A copy of the presentation can be found here.

Presentations

Somebody recently asked for a copy of our GreenBuild 2008 presentation. For a copy, please click here. While I'm at it, here's a copy of an old "Green Buildings at Harvard" presentation (very outdated now).

NESEA Presentation

On March 11, 2009, Nathan Gauthier was part of the "Best Practices for a Sustainable Campus" session at the NESEA BuildingEnergy 09 conference. Mark Sternick from Dietz and Co. Architects chaired the session and Ellen Watts from Architerra co-presented with Nathan. Ellen presented the results of a survey of higher ed institutions in the Boston Consortium (using absolutely amazing graphics I might add) . Nathan presented on the efforts to green Harvard University. A copy of his presentation, titled Sustainability at Harvard, can be found here.

GHG Reduction Presentation

Nathan Gauthier presented on "Greenhouse Gas Reduction Planning: From Initial Commitment to Implementation" at Tulane University on Thursday, March 12. The talk was well attended and the group discussed what it means for Tulane to have signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. A copy of the presentation can be found here.