FINAL_AnnualReport_2010-11

Rutgers Center forGREENBUILDING

2010-2011 Annual Report

2 Annual Report 2010-2011

Letter from the Directors

Dear Advisors, Funders, Supporters, and Friends:

Welcome to the Rutgers Center for Green Building Annual Report for 2010/2011. Since our formation in 2006, the Center has made great strides in accomplishing its core mission – the promotion of green building and sustainable community – through contributions in research, education and training, and partnerships with industry, government and not-for-profit organizations. In this we are particularly grateful to you, our advisors and supporters, and to our many collaborators within the University community. Not least of all, we would like to express our gratitude to the Center’s core faculty, staff, student researchers and interns without whom none of our work would be possible.

The following pages showcase some of our key projects and involvements. Highlights include the completion of a detailed collection of green building best practices in the form of the NJ Green Building Manual v1.0 (greenmanual.rutgers.edu), and ongoing research on establishing recommendations in the overlapping areas of green building and public health policy based on case study research funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ideas for future research include distilling the lessons of the recent Team NJ experience at the US DOE Solar Decathlon 2011 into future commercialization strategies, and continued efforts at elevating usability as a performance measure, predictor of building performance and design criterion.

This list of priorities is by no means comprehensive and, as has been our habit, we will continue to solicit ideas for what is needed from you. On behalf of the Rutgers Center for Green Building, we wish you all the best for the winter holidays and a healthy and happy 2012.

Sincerely yours,

Clinton J. Andrews

Director, Faculty Advisor

Jennifer Senick

Executive Director

3 Rutgers Center for Green Building

The Rutgers Center for Green Building promotes green building and sustainable community through research, education, and training, and partnerships with industry, government, and not-for-profit organizations.

The Rutgers Center for Green Building at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy forms a common umbrella for existing and proposed initiatives being carried out at the Bloustein School, the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (formerly Cook College), the School of Engineering and other Rutgers units that are integral to devel-oping and implementing innovative green building and sustainable community strategies. The Center conducts applied research utilizing prospective and existing projects, works with industry and government to promote green building and sustainability concepts, and develops undergraduate, graduate and professional education programs. Initial funding was provided by the Rutgers University Academic Excellence Fund and subsequently by strategic partners and clients and through various grants. The Rutgers Center for Green Building seeks to es-tablish itself as the pre-eminent interdisciplinary center for green building excellence in the Northeast, while serving as a single accessible locus for fostering collaboration among green building practitioners and policymakers.

2010 - 2011 StaffDirectors

Jennifer SenickMA, PhD CandidateExecutive DirectorAdvisory to US Green Building Council NJ Chapter; Editorial Board, Brownfield News; Steering Committee, Green Building Alliance DASH Initiative; Co-Chair, EDRA Network, Sustainable Planning, Design and Behavior Network

Clinton J. AndrewsPhD, LEED APDirector & Faculty AdvisorAmerican Collegiate Schools of Planning, Board of Directors, 2008–13; International Society for Industrial Ecology, Board of Directors, 2010-2012; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Chair, Ethics and Member Conduct Committee, 2012; New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Member, Science Advisory Board, 2010-2012

Faculty/StaffMaryAnn Sorensen Allacci PhDDunbar P. Birnie, III PhDMichael Kornitas CEM, LEED APUta Krogmann PhDDavid Listokin PhDGediminas “Gedi” Mainelis PhDDeborah Plotnik BArch, LEED APLisa Rodenburg PhDJudith Auer Shaw PhD, AICP, PPEric Tuvel MCRP, MPPJennifer Ward Souder MLA, LEED APRichard Wener PhD

Students/ConsultantsDavid Burgy BS, BA, MCRP CandidateAnthony Capece BS, MCRP CandidateElizabeth Derry BA, MCRP CandidateBen Faust BA, MCRP CandidateElizabeth Hewitt MUP, PhD CandidateKerven Montfort BA, JD/MSP Ishanie Niyogi B.Arch., MCRP CandidateTiffany Pryce B.Arch., MCRP CandidateHandi Chandra Putra BA, MS, MCRP CandidateDavid Stanek MCRPShannon Sweeney MPH, Ph.D. CandidateAdam Szlachetka MCRP, LEED APJessica Whang BS, MCRP CandidateXiaodan Yan B.S., MCRP


2010-11 Highlights

Keynote Project

New Jersey Green Building Manual Version 1.0 The New Jersey Green Building Manual (NJGBM or Manual) is a comprehensive web-based document that provides economic and environmental best practices for green building. The NJGBM is organized into four sections — New Commercial, Existing Com-mercial, New Residential and Existing Resi-dential — each of which contains best prac-tice strategies and case studies that illustrate how these strategies have been implemented in New Jersey within a “lessons learned” framework. Best practice strategies include all aspects of green building, but are focused on those that promote energy efficiency in keep-ing with recent policy trends.

The NJGBM is a consensus-driven product. Throughout its creation, two groups — the Residential and the Commercial Technical Advisory Group — provided sub-stantive expertise and judgement across all aspects of the Manual. Additional groups that contributed to the Manual include the Mu-nicipal Advisors and the Local Code Officials, Rutgers Center for Green Building staff and student researchers and of course the group of

state agencies that oversaw the development of the Manual.

The development of the New Jersey Green Building Manual (NJGBM) Version 1.0 by the Rutgers Center for Green Building was funded by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and overseen by a master advisory group of State Agencies including NJDEP, the Depart-ment of Community Affairs, the Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, the Board of Public Utilities, the Economic Development Authority, and the Governor’s Policy Office.

greenmanual.rutgers.edu

PSE&G: Energy Technology Demonstration Grant ProgramRutgers, The State University of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), partners in the US Department of Energy (US DOE) Solar Decathlon 2011 competition as “Team New Jersey,” have received a grant from the PSE&G Energy Technology Demonstration Grant Program.

www.solarteamnewjersey.com

These funds serve to encourage develop-ment of an affordable building design pro-gram in parallel and in conjunction with the development of the prototype house that is being built for the US DOE Solar Decathlon 2011 competition. The program will look for ways to spin-out commercialization efforts that are tied to the innovations that are being field tested in the 2011 Solar Decathlon entry in a manner that could stimulate job creation and net-zero home construction in the state.

A number of private-sector companies that partnered with Team NJ on the original

application are expected to be involved in grant activities. These include Northeast Pre-cast, Petra Solar, Pulte Homes, and Noveda Technologies.

USDOE: Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster (GPIC)The Greater Philadelphia Innovation Clus-ter (GPIC) is located at The Navy Yard in Philadelphia. The goals of the GPIC are to improve energy efficiency and operability and reduce carbon emissions of new and existing buildings, and to stimulate private invest-ment and quality job creation in the Greater Philadelphia region, the larger Mid Atlantic region, and beyond. The GPIC will focus on full spectrum retrofit of existing average size commercial and multi-family residential buildings.

Rutgers’ contributions to these goals are in two key areas that embody the strengths of New Jersey’s comprehensive public university. Engineering researchers are developing inte-grated technology solutions for constructing and operating energy-efficient buildings. So-cial science researchers are developing an im-proved understanding of how policy, markets, and behavior influence building performance.

HUD: Green and Active Living DesignThis recently awarded project studies Green and Healthy Homes from a perspective that broadens the notion of green building design to take into account other design–related is-sues that have important health consequenc-es. The Center is doing this by studying a new green residential facility in the South Bronx, NY, Intervale Green, built and operated by the Women’s Housing and Economic De-velopment Corporation (WHEDCO). The Center is assessing the impact of the build-ing’s design on health, looking particularly at asthma. In so doing the Center takes the common definition of green building, with its focus on such elements as resource use and

indoor air quality, and expands it to include 1) synergies with environmental design for active living, and 2) a focus on human be-havior, in the form of operator and resident actions, that can significantly affect the design in impacting environmental quality.

The Center is studying Intervale Green by documenting the design and operation of the facility and by collecting longitudinal data that addresses the impact of living in this facility over time through an experiment that uses a focused and enhanced intervention to maximize the impact of green and active living design. The Center hypothesizes that IAQ will improve with increased adoption of green strategies and levels of physical activity will increase with adoption of active living strategies. As a result of both, we expect to see reductions in symptoms of related conditions, in particular (asthma along with obesity, which is, for this study, considered a related condition).


US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011

2011 SOLAR DECATHLON SPONSORS

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology partnered to submit a Team New Jersey entry in the US Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon competition. This collaboration, led by the multidisciplinary Rutgers Center for Green Building and the NJIT College of Architecture and Design, involved students, faculty, and staff from a number of relevant disciplines spread across these two senior units of New Jersey’s public university system.

The Solar Decathlon is an international design/build competition hosted biannually by the US DOE. The Decathlon challenges 20 college teams from around the globe in 10 evaluated categories to design, build, and operate the most livable, energy-efficient, solar-powered house. The winner of the com-petition is the team that best blends aesthetics and modern conveniences with maximum energy production and optimal efficiency, while being sensitive to cost.

Team New Jersey’s Solar Decathlon entry, ENJOY was designed and built to operate in a sustainable, cost-efficient, zero-energy fash-ion using active solar photovoltaic and solar thermal systems, plus other innovative design features.

Learn more about the team at:

www.solarteamnewjersey.com

J Supor & Son Trucking and Rigging Co. Inc.

PaneliteChaos Group

Dumar Services LLC

Builder First Source, Atlantic Group LLC Dais Analytic

Aqua Products BASF Cintas Fire Protection


NJ Green Home Remodeling GuidelinesThe Center was hired with funding from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJ DEP) to develop New Jersey specific Green Home Remodeling Guidelines that address the unique socio-economic and environmental needs in regions such as the New Jersey Meadowlands, Highlands, Pinelands and the Shoreline. The Center has engaged an Expert Advisory Group made up of building industry stakeholders to provide input and feedback throughout the develop-ment of the guidelines.

Current ProjectsNJ Climate Choice Home Pilot ProjectCreated by the Office of Clean Energy of the NJ Board of Public Utilities in 2009, the New Jersey Climate Choice Home Pilot Project represents the top of a three-tiered residential energy efficiency rating system. The project involves the construction of residential build-ings (both single- and multi-family homes) that meet stringent energy efficiency require-ments and approach net-zero energy con-sumption through incorporation of on-site renewable energy. As part of the data analysis and reporting component of the evaluation, the Rutgers Center for Green Building is creating a comprehensive life cycle cost tool to analyze energy life cycle performance in a sample of pilot Climate Choice homes. RCGB also will be conducting homeowner interviews/surveys in order to gather informa-tion on occupancy patterns, behaviors, and other factors affecting energy consumption.

USGBC: Overcoming Barriers to Occupant Productivity Enhancement and Good Building OperationsThe Center has received funding from the US Green Building Council for the project “Overcoming Barriers to Occupant Productivity Enhancement and Good Building Operations.” This project includes engineering studies and post occupancy evaluation studies of case study buildings, and utilizes an “agent-based” simulation model to assess how buildings impact occupant performance and how occupants impact building performance under a variety of different scenarios. Recent publications associated with this study include the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics – Part A: Systems and Humans article titled Designing Buildings for Real Occupants: An Agent-Based Approach.

NSF: Self-Sufficient Urban Buildings This project combines field- and simulation-based studies to investigate the potential for achieving sustainable design in the provision and use of energy and water systems in urban buildings. The specific focus of this work is an examination of the scientific, engineering, and human factors affecting potential self-sufficiency of urban buildings. Data asso-ciated with engineer-ing performance and human behavior is being collected from a simulated build-ing and three urban buildings in New York City, all of which vary with respect to their design and the social structures that exist within them.

Completed ProjectsNJAR: Costs & Benefits of Residential Energy Efficiency InvestmentsSurvey research demonstrates that homeown-ers make purchasing choices about a home that relate to its specific attributes or features, including those of an energy efficient home. These may include energy-efficient windows, appliances, heating and cooling systems, ventilation systems, use of sustainable and healthy materials and a home’s environmen-tal certification (LEED, ENERGY STAR or otherwise).

To help the New Jersey Association of Realtors (NJAR) and the real estate industry understand the net economic benefits of green home building, RCGB has completed a detailed analysis of the upfront costs, oper-ating savings, payback period, and appraisal and valuation benefits for these green fea-tures. The study achieves this goal for a range of energy efficiency options by calculating the

cost for each option, modeling associated en-ergy savings and changes in a builder’s operat-ing costs, and netting out those cost within a life-cycle costing framework. Each option is compared to a baseline, which will give us an idea of how economically viable each construction technique or energy efficiency bundle really is.

NJ – USGBC: Green Building Case Study ResearchThe Center received funding from the US Green Building Council–NJ Chapter to de-velop a series of green building case studies in New Jersey. Three case studies have been completed under this project. They are the Waterfront Technology Center Study: A New Jersey Economic Development Author-ity Building; Maplewood Police and Court Building: A Post Occupancy Evaluation; and Green Residential Home Study: A Shore Community in New Jersey. These case studies examine a variety of building performance metrics, including occupancy satisfaction measures.

Version 1.0


The State of the CenterFuture Research DirectionsThe Rutgers Center for Green Building continues to seek to elevate usability as a performance measure, predictor of building performance and, consequently, design crite-rion, alongside the traditional green-building objectives of resource efficiency and health benefits, and the broader architectural objec-tives of functionality, structural integrity, and beauty. This leads us to focus on human be-havior as it affects building performance and is affected by building design choices. Ques-tions that this research addresses include: How do real people behave in real buildings? What explains observed occupant and op-erator behavior? How can we apply what we learn?

Our post-occupancy studies use tools that include survey research, focus groups, inter-views, self-reports, and observational studies. When coupled with objective measurements of building performance, these techniques allow us to characterize the frequency and types of actual behaviors, and their impacts on building performance.

Explanatory research develops and tests theories to account for observed occupant and operator behaviors and their impacts. We pursue two distinct modes of explanatory research: hypothesis testing and simulation modeling. Hypothesis testing involves the collection of empirical data under experi-mental or quasi-experimental conditions, and testing the significance of inferences about literature-based hypotheses that can be drawn from those data. Simulation modeling is a form of grounded theorizing that helps with theory development, in which we hypothesize that humans follow specific behavioral rules and heuristics, embed those in a computer program, and then calibrate and validate the model using empirical evidence.

Prescriptive research applies what we have learned to guide future building designs. Pre-scriptions come in several forms. Policy analy-ses investigate the efficiency, fairness, and

efficacy of alternative regulations, incentives, and informational tools to improve the built environment. Benchmarking studies charac-terize the relative performance of buildings and provide a basis for setting performance targets. Best practices studies identify the range of currently available design choices and identify those that best satisfy specific design objectives. Simulation modeling tools allow in silico evaluations of how alternative designs perform.

Additionally, recent efforts to provide build-ing owners and operators with energy (and other) best practice standards create an open-ing for the standardization of usability and associated behavioral research. Thus, we are working with numerous colleagues to evolve standardized approaches to the collection of behavioral data and for incorporating the same into emerging industry norms shep-herded by ISO, BOMA, and others.

Beyond the individual building, the Center also hopes to pursue a research agenda link-ing usability and other behavioral metrics and sustainable communities. The inaugural meeting of the EDRA Sustainable Planning, Design and Behavior Network, co-chaired by Jen Senick and Rich Wener will focus on establishing viable research projects when it meets in Seattle in the Spring of 2012.

Financials Since our formation in 2006, the Rutgers Center for Green Building has grown steadily. This measured pattern of growth has permit-ted us to establish our core competencies, build staff and otherwise invest in our future.

In 2010-2011, we continued a positive trend of winning significant federal research funds and smaller complementary grants. We also greatly expanded our universe of do-nors through the US DOE Solar Decathlon project to which many of you provided cash and in-kind donations. We look forward to another productive year in 2012.

$.5 M

$1.5 M

$2.5 M

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Total Annual Funding 2006 - 2011

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011


$300 K$150 K

$600 K

$1.3 M

$1.6 M

$2.5 M


$300 K$150 K

$600 K

$1.3 M

$1.6 M

$2.5 M

$.5 M

$1.5 M

$2.5 M

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011


2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Recent Publications Clinton J. Andrews, Lisa Dewey-Mattia, Judd Schech-tman, and Mathias Mayr, “Alternative energy sources and land use,” in G. Ingram & H. Hong, eds., Climate Change, Energy Use, and Land Policies, Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2011.

Frank Felder, Clinton J. Andrews, and Seth Hulkower, “Which energy future? Scenarios for the global energy sector,” in F. Sioshansi, ed., What energy future? Sus-tainable lifestyle on a finite planet, Dordrecht: Elsevier, 2011.

Clinton Andrews, Daniel Yi, Uta Krogmann, Jennifer Senick and Richard Wener, “Designing buildings for real occupants: An agent-based approach,” IEEE Trans-actions on Systems Man and Cybernetics A: Systems and Humans, 2011.

Clinton J. Andrews, “”Does the Fukushima accident significantly change the nuclear footprint?” Electricity Journal 24(6)(July 2011): 36-39.

Clinton J. Andrews, “Policy Perspectives: What I learned from the recession,” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Spring 2011, 30(2): 6–7.

Clinton Andrews, Jennifer Senick, and Richard Wener. John Wiley and Sons “Enhancing Building Performance. Chapter 10: Incorporating Occupant Perceptions and Behavior into BIM.”

The Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey33 Livingston Avenue - Room 166

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Phone: 732.932.4101 ext. 626

Fax: 732.932.0934

Email: [email protected]

www.greenbuilding.rutgers.edu

Rutgers Center forGREENBUILDING

Photo Credits

Front Cover: One Crescent Drive, Philadelphia Navy Yard, RCGB Photo; New Jersey Meadowlands Commission Center for Environmental & Science Education; New Jersey Economic Development Authority Waterfront Tech Center | Page 3: Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy Page 4: Philadelphia Navy Yard; Intervale Green, WHEDCO | Page 5: 2011 US DOE Solar Decathlon | Page 6: 2020 Tower, Kiss + Cathcart, Architects; New Jersey Economic Development Authority Waterfront Tech Center | Page 7: Programmable thermostat bulb By cthoyes via Flickr; Usability photos, RCGB | Back Cover: Intervale Green, WHEDCO; Maplewood Police Department Solar Panels © Image Up Studio Metuchen, NJ; 14 Maple Avenue, Morristown, NJ - Halkin Photography, LLC; Usability RCGB Photo; New Jersey Meadowlands Commission Center for Environmental & Science Education; Neptune Midtown Community Elementary School; Xeriscaping RCGB Photo; Neptune Midtown Community Elementary School

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