Carrie Brown

New York State has nearly 5.3 million buildings, and all of them are vulnerable in some way to the impacts of climate change. Understanding these impacts is critical, because risks to buildings not only threaten individual lives but also pose threats to community-level resilience. This chapter examines the impacts of climate change on buildings and, by extension, the people and communities they shelter and support. It also highlights building types and populations that are at particular risk… Show more

New York State has nearly 5.3 million buildings, and all of them are vulnerable in some way to the impacts of climate change. Understanding these impacts is critical, because risks to buildings not only threaten individual lives but also pose threats to community-level resilience. This chapter examines the impacts of climate change on buildings and, by extension, the people and communities they shelter and support. It also highlights building types and populations that are at particular risk and presents adaptation strategies to protect the state’s existing and future building stock from climate impacts. Show less

This paper will summarize the findings of the recent Buildings of Excellence (BOE) Trend Analysis. NYSERDA’s $58M BOE Competition rewards the design, construction, and operation of clean, resilient, and carbon-neutral multifamily buildings. The BOE Competition supports projects that will achieve exceptional energy efficiency in combination with low carbon strategies to cost-effectively improve and deliver occupant safety, health, and comfort. The Trend Analysis analyzed the design of 42… Show more

This paper will summarize the findings of the recent Buildings of Excellence (BOE) Trend Analysis. NYSERDA’s $58M BOE Competition rewards the design, construction, and operation of clean, resilient, and carbon-neutral multifamily buildings. The BOE Competition supports projects that will achieve exceptional energy efficiency in combination with low carbon strategies to cost-effectively improve and deliver occupant safety, health, and comfort. The Trend Analysis analyzed the design of 42 multifamily buildings ranging from 2 to 52 stories and includes quantitative analysis of economic performance, energy use, and carbon emissions, including embodied carbon. It also includes qualitative information on planning and design approaches, measure specifications, building operations, and non-energy benefits (e.g., resiliency). Show less

Weather data has a wide range of applications in the built environment such as the analysis of energy efficiency measures, life cycle cost, and emissions. For the past 50 years, building simulation efforts have typically relied on typical meteorological year (TMY) or reference year data (Crawley, 2015), but recently some applications have switched to alternate weather files, such as actual meteorological year (AMY), extreme meteorological year (XMY), and future typical meteorological year… Show more

Weather data has a wide range of applications in the built environment such as the analysis of energy efficiency measures, life cycle cost, and emissions. For the past 50 years, building simulation efforts have typically relied on typical meteorological year (TMY) or reference year data (Crawley, 2015), but recently some applications have switched to alternate weather files, such as actual meteorological year (AMY), extreme meteorological year (XMY), and future typical meteorological year (FTMY) data. This study explored the impact of switching from existing TMY datasets to more recent or future-looking datasets through a literature review, stakeholder interviews, weather file analysis, and a modeling exercise. The study summarized the current state of weather file availability and usage, data variation among available formats, impacts on projected energy use and peak demand, challenges to switching to new formats, and the implications for program and code development protocols for a state agency. Show less