Designing, redeveloping communities for zero energy needed to address climate change

To speed the transition to zero carbon emissions, the U.S. must focus on designing or redeveloping entire communities that are zero energy, according to Charles Kutscher, a long-time energy efficiency researcher.

Tackling building energy use at the district level provides economies of scale in heating and cooling. Used on some U.S. college and other campuses, systems with a central plant that burns natural gas to heat water, which then is circulated to the various buildings, are more efficient than dedicated systems for each building.

To achieve zero carbon emissions, the latest strategy for district systems uses an ambient temperature loop that “simultaneously and efficiently both heats and cools different buildings,” Kutscher writes. “Heat pumps at individual buildings or other points along the ambient loop add or extract heat from the loop. They can also move heat between deep geothermal wells and the circulating water.”

National research labs and other project partners are developing an open source software development kit called URBANopt that models elements of zero energy districts. These can include building efficiency/demand flexibility strategies, rooftop photovoltaic arrays, and ambient loop district thermal systems. The software can be integrated into other computer models to aid in design of zero energy communities.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.