The Abrams Clean Tech Report

 

DOE’s Zero-Net Energy Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) Launches w/Establishment of the National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT); CA Clean Tech Open Gets 100k from NREL

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

My Tuesday afternoon this week I was busy scribbling notes in a press briefing, caught up in an announcement that should have sent some shock waves reverberating across the country, certainly, if not elsewhere. The backdrop for the announcement? The California Clean Tech Open.

Significantly, a new National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT) has been formed by the Directors of the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories (Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) and the Department of Energy. The announcement was made by outgoing Assistant DoE Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner, who, in conjunction with an announcement of the Collaborative, also announced the launch of the DoE’s Zero-Net Energy Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) at the latest California Clean Tech Open Event Tuesday. In addition, NREL, as a DoE-sponsored National Lab, is providing $100,000 to the CCTO on behalf of DOE/NLCBT to facilitate initiation and development of a green building awards category under the competition.

Let me spell that out a little more clearly: as a result of the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007 (Note: EISA, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush into law in December, calls for all new commercial buildings to be so efficient in energy consumption and in on-site renewable energy generation that they offset any energy use from the grid), there are statutory authorizations of up to $250 million a year going to green building initiatives. [(1) $20,000,000 for fiscal year 2008; (2) $50,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010; (3) $100,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2011 and 2012; and (4) $200,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2013 through 2018.] The first $40 million is going to green buildings; and the very first $100,000 of that $40 million is going to the California Clean Tech Open. This should give you a sense of the importance and critical role that the CCTO is playing in making all this stuff ‘go’. And this news comes on the heels of hearing that the CA Clean Tech Open is going to be blowing out the Program in a wider scope, with a regional Clean Tech Open coming soon – Denver having been picked as the next stop, if I have my facts straight. (NREL’s in CO, so it makes sense.)

Per Marc Gottschalk, a Co-founder of the Clean Tech Open and a partner at the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, “The fact that the Department of Energy and its National Labs chose sponsorship of the California Clean Tech Open Green Building Prize as one of its first acts of collaboration under this new initiative underscores their commitment to and recognition of critical importance of public/private cooperation. We are committed to working alongside them and our intrepid entrepreneurs and inventors to catalyze new clean tech enterprises that can achieve Net Zero energy buildings as rapidly as humanly possible.”

The day marked also the very first time all members of the Collaborative met formally, and to follow on this historic meeting, in the press room for the briefing were Karsner; David E. Rodgers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency, Office of Technology Development, EERE; Steven Chu, Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Bobi Garrett, Associate Director, Strategic Development & Analysis, NREL; Michael Kluse, Director of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Robert Rosner, Director, Argonne National Laboratory; and Tom Mason, Director Oak Ridge National Lab.

The urgency in the room was palpable. Karsner was clear: “We have no time to lose. This is about galvanizing the leading minds and the leading resources to solve this problem.”

The Commercial Building Initiative [CBI], includes
The National Laboratory Collaborative for Building Technologies – a network of lab experts
Supporting Consortium – a public/private partnership to provide “arms and legs”
Partner Consortia – building sector groups with which the DOE will consult
Commercial Building Integration R&D – congressionally funded R&D efforts
Commercial Lighting Solutions – partnerships to accelerate commercialization of advanced lighting
Commercial Building Energy Alliances – key partners from major sectors sharing best practices
- Retailer Energy Alliance (launched in February 2008)
- Commercial Real Estate Energy Alliance (forming steering committee 08)
- Institutional Energy Alliances
Hospital Energy Alliance (forming steering committee 08)
Higher Education Energy Alliance (09)
State and Local Government Energy Alliance (09)
- Commercial Building Industry Alliance (09)
National Accounts (NAs) – key industry partners conducting cost-shared RD&D

So on a national level, the Laboratory Collaborative will serve as the platform from which to accelerate transformation of the biggest energy consuming sector in the United States: commercial buildings. Specifically, the Collaborative’s mission is to make Net Zero buildings commercially viable and profitable. (In case you’re not familiar with the term, Net-Zero Energy Commercial Buildings are grid-integrated buildings capable of generating as much energy as they consume through advanced efficiency technologies and on-site generation systems such as solar power and geothermal energy.) That means making profitable the technologies that will support Net Zero Energy Efficient commercial buildings. So technologies such as building envelope technologies, solid state lighting, smart electronics, intelligent grid technologies, building simulation software, etc., all come into play here.

Why our commercial building infrastructure, you ask? Because commercial buildings and homes account for such an enormous percentage of our domestic energy use. The buildings sector consumes more energy than either industrial or transportation, surpassing industrial as the number one consuming sector in 1995. Buildings account for 72 percent of U.S. electricity use and 55 percent of natural gas use, including the gas used at power plants to generate electricity. Commercial buildings represent over one-third of electricity usage and are big contributors to peak usage. By dramatically reducing building loads through advanced design, intelligent building operation, and innovative smart technology, buildings will require less electricity overall and have reduced peak demands, including peak cooling demands. And where much of a medium or large building’s cooling energy use is actually due to “internal” heat gains – from equipment and lights – as well as from windows, more efficient lights and equipment and better windows dramatically reduce the cooling and therefore energy demands of buildings.

NREL’s Bobi Garrett quietly noted, “This opportunity represented here is a very significant one…it’s not often that the Department brings the total system to bear on a problem.” So why address the problem just now, and not earlier?

“This has been a time of evolutionary understanding of the challenges we face, and simply put, the point of discovery was not the point of action. Everyone has failed abysmally to galvanize and address the problem.” There’s truth in that. It has taken “a broader societal motivation” for things to reach a tipping point.

Karsner himself noted the historic significance of a Collaborative finally coming together around the issue. “I can’t emphasize enough how special it is, in terms of the U.S. Government’s capacity to, at scale, and in a timeframe that’s consequential, have this kind of firepower on the same stage, now postured to perform. We can now be a force greater than the sum of its parts.” Kluse concurred. “The improvements we’re trying to make are bigger than any one lab alone,” he said. Kluse’s lab has a long history in supporting the DOE’s mission in energy efficiency, not unlike the other labs in the Collaborative. Steven Chu is clearly a man concerned. “This is an emergency that’s as visible as the iceburg a mile away,” he noted during the press briefing, emphasizing that it only requires just a mere 5 degree shift higher in temperatures to wreak havoc on life on earth in very many ways. “We need everybody to pitch in. Essentially, we have to make this profitable. If buildings represent more than 40% of all the energy we consume, then including transportation – this is a very big deal. You can get rid of 3/4 of the energy we use just in buildings alone.” Chu expressed to me after the briefing that he was very concerned that the American public doesn’t grasp the enormity of the situation.

The new Collaborative, by the way, is backed by the DoE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Building Technologies Program.

The roll out goal is development of a multi-year plan and time table to achieve Net Zero Energy in new commercial buildings by 2025. All climate zones in the country will be included in the plan. The 5 labs mentioned will be responsible for developing the multi-year plan in the context of both policy and business plans that bring solutions to the table, such as those being developed by CCTO competition entrants and alums. Simultaneously investment will be made in a multi-year plan for existing buildings under the existing statute. The National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT), will allow the DOE and the five above mentioned of its national laboratories to work closely on the research, validation, and commercialization priorities that are critical to the success of Net Zero energy buildings, essentially pushing political gating factors aside, and combining the scientific resources of the five Laboratories to tackle the problem.

This is huge, folks…

One Response to “DOE’s Zero-Net Energy Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) Launches w/Establishment of the National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies (NLCBT); CA Clean Tech Open Gets 100k from NREL”

  1. Feds drop some pocket change on the California Clean Tech Open | Keeping The Lights On Says:
    August 7th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

    [...] can read more about it on Lara Abram Clean Tech Report blog post. from two days [...]

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