Designing for Zero Net Carbon: Three All-Electric Multifamily Building Case Studies

This webinar will showcase 3 all-electric affordable housing projects documented to achieve good energy performance and low carbon emissions through incorporation of energy-efficient design strategies and on-site renewable energy systems. Ed Dean, FAIA, will walk you through design strategies employed for each project, discuss the readily available all-electric building systems utilized by the design teams, and present measured post-occupancy performance data.

Instructor Bio:

Edward Dean, FAIA, is a practicing architect and sustainability consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been a champion of low-energy aspects of green building design for his entire career. After teaching design studio and environmental courses at UC Berkeley for 10 years, he turned to full time architectural practice working for Joseph Esherick in San Francisco as lead designer on a number of projects noted for their innovative aspects in green design, in particular design for daylight. He continued to work in the mainstream practice of architecture at major firms, including NBBJ, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca (ZGF), SMWM (now part of Perkins & Will) and SOM.

Currently, he is one of the leaders of the architectural profession in the design of Zero Net Energy (ZNE) buildings. He led the design team for the West Branch Library for the City of Berkeley that was certified ZNE in 2015 by the International Living Future Institute, achieved LEED-Platinum certification and was selected in 2016 as one of the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Projects.

Ed is now engaged in full-time consulting practice with his own firm, Bernheim + Dean Inc., in sustainable and healthy building design, and ZNE design in particular. He is the author of a series of case study books on Zero Net Energy and Zero Net Carbon.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand through several multifamilycase studies the relative impact on carbon emissions attributable to both building construction and building operation.
• Review examples of common multifamilybuilding types that achieve ZNE performance without onsite combustion and examples that will cause zero-operational carbon emissions once the electric grid is decarbonized.
• Review how on-site renewable energy with and without battery storage can support ZNE and “zero carbon” performance, and explain how building efficiency and on-site energy storage affect harmonization with the electric grid.
• Be able to perform a comparison of embodied carbon for two alternative design approaches.