In 2023, Massachusetts will implement a new energy code, giving it one of the most progressive energy standards in the country. The code seeks to align with other upcoming regulations pushing projects to decarbonize and electrify and provides separate pathways for projects depending on their program, size, and location. This presentation will help architects and other design professionals to adapt projects already on the boards to meet these new code requirements and to start new projects off on the right foot.

Built environment researchers and analysts love case studies — focusing on one building at a time is generally how much of the consulting-focused industry works. However, generalizability has the been a key focus of analysis and optimization across many other domains including marketing, online retail, cars, and consumer devices. This talk will give Dr. Miller’s perspective on how we can learn from these fields in understanding the concepts of scalability and generalizability of analysis across large numbers of buildings. Dr. Miller will discuss examples of these concepts such as the Great Energy Predictor III Kaggle Competition and the Cozie smartwatch human-building data collection platform. He will also cover the need for built environment professionals to improve their data literacy through coding skills.

Reducing carbon or decarbonization in building design has become critical effort in tackling climate change and improving our environment. While the previous effort has been focusing on operational carbon or reducing energy usage, designing to the whole life carbon design including embodied carbon should be the current practice now. The presentation and panel discussion will discuss the whole life carbon design in building design especially in embodied carbon and its coupling to the operational carbon. Three different speakers with different backgrounds will discuss how we should implement the whole life carbon design in the building.