Cutting carbon from complex buildings, aligning shared heating and cooling assets across multiple buildings, and meeting compliance with stringent new codes, electrifying old systems – these are daunting challenges. But there are already success stories right here in Seattle and Bellevue.
Repowering the Hutch central plant with clean heating and cooling
One of the world’s premier research and treatment life sciences centers for cancer and more, Seattle’s own Fred Hutch Cancer Center (FHCC) occupies more than a dozen buildings in the Eastlake neighborhood. The buildings’ ages and uses vary – some are laboratories with long-running research underway, others are active patient treatment centers. Each building has hyper-critical functions: it’s essential that FHCC’s air and water are both thermally stable and perfectly sanitary for sensitive research conditions and comfort for people receiving life-saving treatment.
To meet those critical thermal needs, the FHCC campus’ central plant has relied upon gas boilers for decades. But in the face of a trifecta of challenges – aging infrastructure, planning for Washington’s Clean Buildings Performance Standard compliance, and the new Seattle Building Emissions Performance Standard – FHCC has chosen to swap its gas-fired equipment for cleaner electric-powered heat pumps. They’re even expanding their heat recovery infrastructure to boost the system’s efficiency.
The FHCC already has more than 2 million square feet across 16 highly sensitive buildings on its decarbonized thermal energy system – proving that even extraordinary buildings can cut carbon. Even more, they’re preparing to decarbonize several individual buildings that are new to their portfolio or too remote to connect to the multi-building district system.
The FHCC has always been “proud to be curing cancer faster” – and now, “yes, they can” do it even more cleanly, too.
Compliance as a service
But even for buildings not curing cancer, it can still seem daunting to meet the Washington State Clean Buildings Standard and the Seattle Building Emissions Performance Standard. Happily, Compliance-as-a-Service has accepted the challenge.
Compliance-as-a-Service (CaaS) can develop and manage energy management plan requirements as well as operations / maintenance plan requirements, regulatory details and updates, provide training, conduct audits, and generate reports to AHJs for buildings to maintain their compliance. Already, 8.1 million square feet of commercial-scale space in Seattle and Bellevue are on the path to meeting their Washington State Clean Buildings Standard and Seattle BEPS compliance via CaaS.
Many of these are complex buildings – hospitals, life sciences laboratories, public and private office buildings, busy schools – best served with highly strategic pathways to code compliance. And with CaaS, even the most extraordinary buildings in Seattle and Bellevue can say “yes we can” to be lean, green, affordably run machines.
Going all-electric, before it was cool (or required)
Aesthetically, it’s obvious this 1950’s building is well behind today’s standards. But the home of Washington State’s Services for the Blind held much more than aesthetic opportunity: it needed a deep energy efficiency retrofit on this Alaska Street building in Seattle’s Central District.
This 2018-2021 project tackled challenges common to aging buildings: failing systems, tight new energy efficiency mandates, and even tighter public facilities budgets. Less common is steering a large project to success within a global pandemic!
Today, this building is a model for renewing an older building to achieve near-net-zero energy. Energy consumption shrunk by 70% and Energy Usage Index (EUI) slimmed to just 25 kBTU/year thanks to high-efficiency heat pumps, interior LED lighting retrofit, improved building envelope with double-pane windows and insulation, and modernized electrical systems and emergency lighting. What a win!
And all this before the Washington State Clean Buildings Standard or the Seattle Buildings Emissions Performance Standard mandated such achievements. The Alaska Street Building saw that it was an affordable, good idea for life safety, asset preservation, and energy costs savings. Going all-electric “before it was cool” (or required) means even complex buildings can affordably meet the challenge.
UMC has tackled tough challenges for extraordinary buildings for more than a century. Cutting energy waste and carbon pollution are only the latest. Together, yes, we can.
About the Author
Bonnie Frye Hemphill is the Director of Policy and Partnerships for UMC, Inc, opening new markets in the clean economy and built environment. She keeps UMC ahead on opportunities and challenges in emerging regulations. Bonnie also serves as a bridge builder for lawmakers and advocates seeking UMC’s expertise toward smart policies.