ASHRAE Makes Green Building a Priority

Buildings are about to get a little—or a lot—greener, thanks to two standards being developed by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).

The first will increase the minimum energy efficiency requirements for all newly constructed buildings in the United States, while the second will provide the industry with the first green building standard for all types of buildings except for low-rise residential structures. Both promise to have a big impact on how buildings are designed and constructed.

The standard that will soon be increasing energy efficiency in buildings is ASHRAE Standard 90.1, which defines the minimum requirements for the energy-efficient design of most types of buildings. It’s referenced as the model energy code for buildings in the United States, meaning that all states are required to adopt an energy building standard at least as efficient as Standard 90.1.

The 2007 version of Standard 90.1 recently was released, and ASHRAE is already looking ahead to the 2010 edition. The society’s goal is a standard that would reduce the allowable energy consumption of buildings by 30 percent compared to the requirements established by the current model energy code. Once released, this will become the minimum requirement for all buildings being constructed. But getting there will take a lot of work, says ASHRAE President Kent Peterson.

“We have three primary subcommittees working on 90.1: building envelope, lighting, and mechanical,” Peterson explains. “They have hundreds of energy-saving alternatives that they’re currently evaluating for the upcoming 2010 version. What they’re trying to do is package some of these together. Obviously, if I make a change to the building envelope, it actually changes the requirements for the building’s mechanical systems. And lighting has an impact on the mechanical systems. So they’re working on trying to put packages together and evaluate these packages on what type of overall reduction they can achieve. When we talk about a 30 percent reduction, we’re looking at an average reduction across the building stock in the United States. So there may be some climate zones where you end up with less than 30 percent and some where you’ll end up with more. But they’re targeting an average 30 percent energy reduction.”

While this will have an important impact on energy usage, for some, it’s not enough. That’s why ASHRAE is working with the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) on another document, Standard 189.1, Standard for the Design of High Performance Green Buildings. Unlike Standard 90.1, Standard 189.1 is concerned with more than energy efficiency; it seeks to address all aspects of designing and constructing green buildings, such as improving indoor air quality, using environmentally friendly materials and resources, and conserving water.

Expected to be released late this year or early 2009, Standard 189.1 will be the first standard on the market specifically designed to provide, in code-intended language, guidelines on what constitutes a green building. (Standard 189.1 is intended for all buildings except low-rise residential structures; green residential buildings will be addressed by the National Green Building Standard, which is being developed by the International Code Council and the National Association of Home Builders.)

Peterson says that people shouldn’t confuse Standard 189.1 with rating systems such as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, which was developed by USGBC. “[LEED is] not a standard. The United States Green Building Council and ASHRAE have worked together to write an ANSI standard which would provide the minimum baseline code requirement for green buildings. The LEED system is still above and beyond what these minimum requirements are. While the LEED rating system is addressing say the top 20 percent of the market, the intent of the standard was to address the minimum requirements for green buildings for any jurisdiction that wanted to mandate that all buildings in the jurisdiction be green buildings. They can’t mandate LEED ratings as code requirements because LEED ratings are just points, and are not written in code language that a code official could actually enforce.”

The standard is far from ASHRAE’s first move into the world of green building. The organization also offers free Advanced Energy Design Guides, which it has developed through partnerships with USGBC, IESNA, the American Institute of Architects, and the U.S. Department of Energy. More than 100,000 of these guides are now in circulation with owners, designers, and contractors.

“We’ve put together these guides to address how you can incorporate through integrated building design the proper decisions in building envelope, what type of glass you want to put on a building, how much glass to use on the north and south exposures versus the east and west, what type of insulation to use, how to effectively get daylighting into a building and implement good lighting controls, and how to reduce the size of the mechanical systems that are required to provide air conditioning or heating to a building, which then reduces the size of the electrical power required to power those things,” Peterson explains.

Meanwhile, ASHRAE is heeding its own advice, and renovating its headquarters facility as a sustainable building. “It’s going to serve as a living lab,” Peterson says. “We’ve instrumented the entire building and we’ll have all the data available on our ASHRAE website so people can see how the building and systems are operating at any give time.”

15 Inverness Way East • Englewood, CO 80112-5776 • USA
Tel: 303-397-7956 • 800-854-7179 • Fax: 303-397-2740
webstore: store.ihs.com