As an example , at Palomar College , we ’ ve been supporting the design of their new Fallbrook campus , which opened a few years ago . During the initial phases of the campus design , we provided natural gas infrastructure to support the hydronic heating and domestic hot water needs of the future buildout of the campus . Since the initial infrastructure project , the College wants to pursue all-electric buildings , impacting the current electrical infrastructure , which did not account for this added load . We ’ re in the design stage of Phase 1 of the permanent buildings , and we ’ re going to use all the electrical capacity during phase one of a multi-phase buildout of their campus . The College will need to explore upgrading the recently installed service or providing a new electrical service to accommodate future buildings on an all-electric campus . This scenario is representative of some of the challenges of achieving carbon neutrality for existing facilities .
How do you calculate emissions from buildings ?
JDM : That ’ s a good question discussed at one of our recent Decarbonization Task Force meetings . The issue is that there ’ s not a consistent methodology . That ’ s one of the challenges that we ’ re facing . As we ’ re looking at setting carbon emission reduction goals , we need to talk to the owner and our clients to understand how they will categorize the carbon . ASHRAE has published a methodology as part of ASHRAE Standard 189.1 , adopted as the 2018 International Green Construction Code , which uses a national average . Now should we use a national average for a project in California ? Should we get more granular and look at whether we ’ re in PG & E , SCE or SDG & E territory ? Or look at it by specific metropolitan area or region ? These are questions that we need to ask our owners .
We had a recent pilot project where we had to get creative to reduce emissions at San Diego State . SDSU utilizes a steam distribution system , which is converted to heating hot water at the buildings via a heat exchanger . This pilot project removed several buildings from the steam system and provided a local HHW plant to serve multiple buildings . The approach implemented a hybrid gaselectric system that would allow the electric generating equipment to handle most of their heating needs . Utilizing actual trend data from the buildings , we saw that 80 % of the heating hours were operating at less than 20 % of the peak heating load observed in these buildings . We were able to make a strategic design to utilize a heat recovery chiller ( electrically operated ), sized for 20 % of the peak capacity , which would handle for 80 % of the operating hours . We also provided a natural gas boiler to handle the peak loads , which were observed for less than 20 % of the operating hours . This was a creative way to find a hybrid solution that could work with the existing infrastructure and reduce the overall operating emissions for these buildings .
The design and construction industry is gearing up to meet the demand by developing these creative strategies . Advances in technologies and integrated project delivery methods will also be a big part of it . We as engineers won ’ t be working in a silo ; we ’ ll need to collaborate with our owners and partners to achieve these carbon reduction goals .
Cutting emissions from the current building stock and future buildings is an enormous undertaking with many challenges . But with challenges come opportunities . Are you expecting a big financial boon to the AEC industry from this ?
JDM : I think it ’ s going to keep P2S and the industry busy . There are legislative mandates , and individual clients themselves are pushing for carbon reductions and carbon neutrality . We have several projects right now that are looking to decarbonize , and we expect that more and more projects will decarbonize in the future . We ’ re excited to help clients to move away from gas systems to allelectric systems .
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