Presentation Materials

Buildings account for nearly 40% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly one third of that is from burning fossil fuels on site. This lecture gives a brief overview of how and why to decarbonize buildings. All topics covered in this slide deck will be explored further in other lectures.

What is driving building decarbonization? Buildings account for a nearly 40% of U.S. GHG emissions, and almost a third are directly attributed to burning fossil fuels onsite. A significant, but smaller portion is from embodied carbon. The carbon emissions of buildings have remained flat in recent years, while the carbon intensity of the utility grid has declined. This slide deck will introduce the reasons behind the building decarbonization movement and why it’s so important.

As a designer, there are a few critical steps along the path to achieving a decarbonized building. The first and most critical step is to first make the building as efficient as possible. This lecture will delve deeper into the most effective strategies for building energy efficiency from an architecture perspective.

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems are a critical component of building energy efficiency. It is essential for all those involved in energy efficient building design to have at least a fundamental understanding of HVAC systems. This slide deck is intended to give architecture students a brief overview.

As a designer, there are a few critical steps along the path to achieving a decarbonized building, starting with energy efficiency. These energy efficiency measures include architectural, HVAC, and lighting strategies. This slide deck will delve into the most effective strategies for building energy efficiency.

Once buildings are as energy efficiency as they can reasonably be, the next step is to decarbonize by eliminating all natural gas uses in the building. This slide deck gives an overview of systems in a typical building that use natural gas and options for replacing them with all-electric equipment.

It’s important to keep in mind our reasons for reducing carbon emissions. What is our end goal and why does it matter? This slide deck covers the basic mechanisms and impacts of climate change.

This presentation is a beginners guide to excellent daylight and electric light design. It covers the importance of daylight and views, as well as several strategies for designing with daylight including exterior shades, light shelves, blinds, clear story windows, top lighting and more. It also gives an overview of the key concepts for electric lighting design, including controls, luminaires, ambient, task and accent lighting, and surface brightness.

In the last 10 years or so the price of solar panels has fallen dramatically, paving the way for significant adoption of this technology. Solar energy is a key component of building electrification, since they are currently the most cost effective way of generating renewable energy on-site. This deck explores the fuction, sizing and use of PV panels in all their building related applications.

Batteries are critical for storing and discharging renewable energy. For instance, they can be charged by solar panels during the day and discharged at night when solar energy is no longer available. These slides provide an introduction to battery sizing, use and applilcations and were developed with engineering students in mind. They also examine the impact of batteries on energy costs, carbon emissions and resiliency.

As the operational efficiency of buildings is improved, the embodied carbon of the materials used to construct the building becomes a larger part of the life cycle carbon emissions. This slide deck compares the impact of operational and embodied carbon and explores ways to reduce both.

Myths surrounding heat pumps abound. False claims such as heat pumps can’t operate at low temperatures, or concerns that they’re not actually better for the environment, can be very detrimental to decarbonization efforts. These statements are often based on outdated facts or simply not true at all. This deck aims to clear up some of these common misconceptions.

This presentation by our collaborators, Atelier Ten, provides a comprehensive overview of embodied carbon in buildings and strategies for reduction. It covers the fundamentals of embodied carbon across the building lifecycle, from extraction through end-of-life, and explains the growing importance of addressing embodied carbon as operational emissions decrease. There is an introduction to whole building LCA tools, benchmarking frameworks like LEED and ILFI Zero Carbon Certification, and provides practical guidance on using embodied carbon as a design tool throughout project phases. The presentation also highlights the co-benefits of embodied carbon reduction, including support for human health, social equity, ecosystem health, and circular economy principles.

This short presentation is intended as a supplement to the Electric Lighting Design Basics and Daylight Design Basics presentations. These slides explain the importance of considering circadian rhythms of building occupants and wildlife, and other impacts on nature when designing electric lighting.

Even if a building’s heating and domestic hot water system is entirely electric, it is still critical to also electrify the cooking equipment. Although in residential applications cooking energy is not significant as compared to heat and hot water, switching to electric cooking entirely eliminates the need for a gas connection to a building which is one of the cost savings benefits of electrification. For a restaurant on the other hand, cooking energy can be greater than 30% of annual energy consumption and therefore becomes much more critical to decarbonize.

A brief introduction on low carbon building materials including AIA’s top ten list for reducing embodied carbon. This presentation goes over different materials’ embodied carbon, embodied carbon versus operational carbon, lower carbon concrete additives, sequestered aggregate, recycled steel, and insulation.

This video is geared towards high school architecture students and explores some of the primary architectural elements that help make a decarbonized building. Did you know that 40% of global carbon emissions come from building construction and operations? That means that buildings are a huge negative contributor to climate change. But, that also means that architecture represents a great opportunity for us to have a positive climate impact if we develop decarbonized buildings. Presentation and materials created by J.R. Jacobs.

This presentation is geared towards high school students and explores topics such as environmental racism, redlining and its impacts on communities located near pollution sources, inequitable responses to climate disasters, and the high energy costs faced by people of color—also known as energy burden. This presentation also explores how environmental justice and efforts to reduce carbon emissions are connected by showing how environmental hazards, systemic racism, and decarbonization affect marginalized communities, especially people of color. Finally, the presentation discusses some emerging solutions to these problems, including policy changes and equitable decarbonization initiatives. Presentation and materials created by J.R. Jacobs.

This presentation is an overview of efficient heating systems for engineers. It covers an overview of the traditional heating systems and explains low energy heating systems including electric space heating and heat pumps, exploring low temperature operation and commercial applications.

An introduction to efficient distribution systems for engineers. It covers an overview of the common/traditional distribution systems and explains low energy distribution systems including Underfloor Air Distribution (UFAD), displacement ventilation, radiant heating and cooling, chilled beams, and low pressure drop systems, among others. It includes strategies for low energy fan based and pump based systems.

Bank Black & Green works to flow capital away from systems invested in mass incarceration and the fossil fuel industry. Stephone Coward II will present his work with Black-owned banks funding local community and Black-owned projects, as well as urban greening projects they have successfully completed. He will explain economic “Just Transitions” and the growing importance of energy democratization. In all of this work, it is integral to decarbonize buildings when separating dependence from the fossil fuel industry and also adding value to the communities Bank Black & Green represents. He will explain the reasons how and why decarbonized buildings play an important role in reducing dependence on systems that inhibit social, environmental, and economic justice.

In residential buildings and restaurants, water heating is generally the largest single energy use, and gas water heaters are currently the norm in most areas. Understanding how to electrify domestic hot water systems is critical in decarbonizing our buildings, and there is new technology available to make this easier than ever. This deck provides detailed calculations suitable for engineering students, but a large portion of the content is applicable to anyone interested in decarbonization.

Although learning the technical aspects of decarbonizing our built environment is critical, ensuring that decarbonization is equitable and just for all people is just as important. This deck explores the concepts of environmental racism, fence-line communities, inequities in climate disaster response, energy burden, and more. It also presents emerging solutions to these issues including policy changes, and equitable decarbonization initiatives.

As the importance of embodied carbon continues to grow, understanding alternative building materials is critical. This slide deck, provided by BDLA collaborator Bruce King, delves into the composition of concrete and how we can reduce its carbon impact.

While the grid is transitioning to renewable energy, the carbon emissions of buildings have remained flat in recent years. A large portion of these emissions is due to space heating, which is most often provided by fossil fuels, particularly in colder climates. Heat pumps are critical for electrification, since they are so much more efficient than electric resistance heating, they achieve a similar cost of heating to a gas boiler and a much lower cost of heating than an electric boiler, while greatly improving efficiency and reducing emissions.

Renewable energy and batteries are crucial to fully decarbonizing a building. In the last 10 years or so the price of solar panels has fallen dramatically, paving the way for significant adoption of this technology. Batteries are now starting to follow a similar trend. This slide deck give an overview of solar energy as it relates to buildings, and dives deeper into the different applications for energy storage.

On a per ton of material basis, wood has a lower global warming impact than steel or concrete. Wood is the only primary structural material that grows naturally and is renewable.  A wood building effectively removes carbon from the carbon cycle for the life of the building. This presentation explores the history of window construction and introduces the concept of using mass timber as a strucutral material.

This presentation is intended as a supplement to the Mass Timber Introduction slide deck. It gives more details regarding design considerations and calculations for designing a mass timber building. It is geared towards engineering students.

A key way to learn about decarbonized buildings is from studying other decarbonized buildings and identifying the aspects that made them successful or can be improved on. This slides deck describes multiple studies of decarbonized buildings across different climates and sector.

Since most of of time is spent in our homes, it is important to consider energy efficiency of residential buildings. This slide deck discusses the most critical aspects of architectural energy efficiency when designing residential buildings.