EEBA's High Performance Home Blog

EEBA is grateful to have two of our National Laboratories as Alliance Partners. Their expertise and scientific innovation have benefited research around the country. But did you know that these two partners are part of a much larger group of 17 National Laboratories? The Department of Energy’s National Labs have been around for more than seventy years as a result of the U.S. Government heavily investing in scientific research during World War II. They each address large-scale, complex research and development challenges placing an emphasis on “translating basic science into innovation.” Some of the National Labs have supercomputers they use to model and simulate complex, dynamic systems that would be too expensive, impractical or impossible to physically demonstrate enabling scientists to explore renewable energy, weather forecasting, biological systems, as well as the evolution of the universe. Half of the fastest supercomputers in the world are located at National...

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Since early March, San Francisco-based technology company, Twitter, has been encouraging its staff to work from home. Recently, CEO Jack Dorsey took it one step further by effectively giving Twitter employees the opportunity to continue to work from home - forever. Twitter had already been looking at moving their workforce to a more “distributed” model as Dorsey has commented that he “no longer wants a workforce concentrated in San Francisco.” This could be interesting. Twitter reportedly has over 5,100 employees - about 1,000 of those based in San Francisco alone. If those employees decide to continue to work from home, what happens to the unused office space? Could the empty office space be turned into workforce housing with shared amenities (not unlike dormitories) with rooms offered at a less-than-market-rate monthly fee? The art-deco building already has yoga rooms, a cafeteria (with microbrews, of course), and a rooftop deck and garden. The idea of repurposing... read more

A recent poll from Green Builder Media showed nearly 37% of their “readers believe that Health and Wellness/Indoor Air Quality will be the segment of the housing industry most impacted by the Coronavirus.” In addition to basic indoor air quality, their data suggests people are also focusing on home healthcare and telemedicine, fitness, cooking and kitchen design, smart home technologies that specifically make homes healthier, resiliency and self-sufficiency, and energy efficiency and onsite energy production. The majority of these topics relate to how we live in our homes. The poll results also show how indoor air quality has gone from being on most people’s “nice to have” list, to now being as important as location to some homebuyers. Data courtesy Green Builder Media High profile entrepreneurs are also looking at ways to improve the air quality in our homes. Elon Musk, the eccentric billionaire with an engineering background, has “dabbled” in technology and is the brains... read more

Energy efficient buildings are in high demand, both for commercial and residential customers. There are a number of advantages to building or retrofitting your home so that it is energy efficient. Energy efficient homes are: More cost effective More environmentally friendly Sold at a premium to buyers concerned with environmentally conscious living Energy efficiency and insulation go hand in hand. We’ll go into details explaining why throughout this article, but there’s one important concept we need to address before going further: the building envelope. Building envelopes are what separates your home’s interior environment from the exterior environment. Heat naturally flows to cold places, so in the summertime heat will try to enter your home, while in the winter heat will try to exit your home. Insulation serves many roles, and impeding heat transfer in order to maintain a comfortable interior environment is one of the most important ones. The Basics The more ... read more

Looking for Housing Market Clues EnergyLogic’s CEO, Steve Byers, offered an interesting insight this week. He noted that, while many are claiming a V-shaped housing market recovery, we should look more closely at the geographic trends of COVID-19 cases in the country to get a better picture of the effects on housing markets in coming months. Housing Leading a Strong Recovery Thus far in this pandemic, housing has held up well. Weekly U.S. pending home sales have rebounded substantially and are now only down 6.5% year-over-year. Click to expand image. Source: Redfin Expectations among homebuilders have regained ground too, with the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index survey of builders at 58 in June, positive again after falling below the neutral value of 50 in April and May. Public expectations are high as well, with the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB) index of public homebuilder stocks up 79.5% from its closing low of $24.14 on in late March. Neither ...

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Hardly affected by growing support for decarbonizing the energy system, fossil fuels are expected to continue dominating global energy. Natural gas has not reset the carbon trajectory. In the US, carbon dioxide emissions from burning natural gas have surpassed those from burning coal. EIA expects no relief: world energy consumption is expected to grow from 549 quadrillion Btu in 2012 to 815 quadrillion Btu in 2040. McKinsey projects that energy-related greenhouse gas emissions will rise 14 percent in the next 20 years. The New York Times drew attention to the decarbonizing challenge: “Even with the impressive recent gains for renewable energy, the world is still far from solving global warming……One reason: carbon-free sources like wind, solar and nuclear power aren’t yet growing fast enough to keep up with rising global energy demand…….global coal consumption could stay flat for decades……the average coal plant in Asia is less than 15 years old (compared to about 41 years... 

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Parsing Signals From Latest Data The outlook for housing in the midst of the COVID-19-induced recession is murky at best. The Housing Tides team has been exploring a wide swath of data from publicly-available sources as we try to make sense of the latest developments. Taken as a whole, we note that housing has performed admirably given the scope of the economic challenges at hand. Lowest-Ever Mortgage Rates Support Prices, Prevent Inventory Glut As Jeff Whiton explained for the Housing Tides blog in May, the dearth of housing inventory in recent years has proven a tremendous advantage for home sellers – both new and existing – during the present crisis. As he suggested, home prices have thus far remained resilient, with Redfin reporting the Denver median sales price was $435k, a year-over-year increase of 1.9%. Prices have surely been buoyed by Denver inventory that totaled just 2.1 months of supply in May. An EnergyLogic survey of quick move-in homes among major.

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For the last five years, Team Zero, also known as the Net Zero Energy Coalition, has been collecting data on Zero Energy residential buildings in the US and Canada. Together, this group of non-profits, industry stakeholders, and associations are collaborating to focus their “zero-related ambitions” on broad industry-led national awareness of Zero Energy. Inventory collection for 2019 will end on August 15, 2020. Eligible projects include: Single–family and multifamily homes New, retrofit, or combined Projects in planning, design, or construction phase, or completed Near-zero, zero-energy-ready, ZNE, or net positive projects If you’re unsure if your project is eligible, simply upload the project data and you will be advised if they need more information. You can quickly and easily enter your project information into their secure database. New this year, the database will be collecting additional information on solar adoption, fuel choices, and trends on... read more

This article can be found on the EnergyLogic website here Continuing the Discussion As introduced in last week’s blog, we’re further exploring income inequality and its effects on housing attainability. Read on below to hear more about what we and others think can be done to reach this important objective. Change may be more achievable during this period of disruption. Don’t Defer the Dream In 1990 as President of the Denver Home Builders Association and the Colorado President for what is now Lennar, I negotiated a groundbreaking agreement with the Federal Housing Administration to ensure that new homes were marketed without prejudice to all regardless of race or national origin. This agreement gained unanimous approval of the HBA’s Board of Directors because it was the right thing to do. We saw evidence of fair marketing practices become mainstream in advertising and direct contact with potential homebuyers. It seemed to me that we were making a lot of progress, as... read more

Adding energy storage to your home is, in many ways, surprisingly similar to buying a car. If I’m like most people, I’d look at quality and reliability, safety, and functionality — among other factors — before choosing my car. Price is typically not the primary concern, otherwise we would see the Chevy Spark outnumber other car models on the streets. When purchasing energy storage, you should use similar criteria to find the right solution for your home. Let’s take a closer look at each of these considerations and how to interpret them when shopping for home battery solutions. QUALITY AND RELIABILITY Nobody likes it when their car breaks down unexpectedly or must be taken in for service. Dealing with these issues costs you time, energy, and money. Thankfully, the right energy storage system can reduce these worries, or eliminate them altogether. By using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry, sonnen can provide the highest-quality and longest-lasting residential storage ... read more