Real Information, Real Solutions: Betsy Pettit on the NESEA BuildingEnergy10 Conference.

The following interview was conducted by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) with Betsy Pettit, President of Building Science Corporation and Chair of this year's BuildingEnergy10 Conference, and has been reprinted here with the permission of NESEA.  We urge you to visit the BuildingEnergy10 Conference website for more information about the conference, and would point out that online registration ends March 5 -- no time to waste!

Some 4,000 renewable energy and green building experts will bring their cutting edge thinking to Boston next March for the BuildingEnergy10 Conference and Tradeshow, the annual event organized by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA). Now in its 35th year, BuildingEnergy is the oldest and largest regional building energy and renewable energy event in the country, with participants coming from across the Northeast – from Maine to Washington, DC.

Q: Why did you decide to step up as Chair of this year’s conference?

A: I felt that this is such an important year in the history of our country, as we rally around the idea of reducing our energy use and our dependence on foreign oil. BE10 is happening in concert with a major cultural change going on in the world right now and the US and particularly the northeast sector is critical to the success of this change. Not since the time of the Citizens Conservation Corps has the average citizen been so empowered to help with these kinds of problems and contribute to the solution. As a professional working in this industry, I wanted to be on the front lines of this sea change.

Q: What are you most excited about when it comes to BE10?

A: All of it! From the Public Forum, where we’ll have a chance to engage with the public and discuss the issues that are important to them creating a dialogue about the strategies homeowners can use to impact the way they use energy. I am very excited about our keynote speaker, Dr. Samuel Baldwin, who is a physicist currently serving as the Chief Technology Officer and a Member of the Board of Directors for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. He’s a truly brilliant man who has been involved for years in the creation of energy policy in this country. He has a unique understanding of what worked and what didn’t work during the energy crisis in the 1970s, and can speak to lessons learned over the course of several decades.

Q: How are the workshops shaping up?

A: We have assembled a world class group of experts for BE10. National leaders like Steve Strong, who has been leading the charge for photovoltaics and Everett Barber who’s been doing the same in the area of solar-thermal systems, each for more than 30 years. And Joseph Lsitburek, who will be discussing the best ways to design and retrofit building enclosures for comfort, durablility, and good indoor air quality – while defining air barriers, water barriers, vapor barriers and how these terms are often misused. Bill Reed will be presenting as well – he’s well known for his innovative thinking about how the built environment can best co-exist with the ecology of our planet. Marc Rosenbaum will talk about how to select mechanical systems for new low-load buildings. John Straube will look at energy tradeoffs for commercial and institutional projects. Where does the money go, what makes sense? I could go on and on – there are too many to name!

Q: What about the content for the sessions? What can we expect there?

A: The sessions will touch on large, important issues like climate change and policy, to newest trends in renewable energy sources. We’ll be focusing on retrofits of existing commercial and institutional buildings as well as single family homes. We’ll look at best practices. We’ll review trends in mechanical system design. What are the issues when we look at buildings from an integrated, whole-systems point of view, and the relationships between the interacting parts? It’s not just about a building, but that building and the neighborhood, and that building and its neighborhood in respect to the region, moving out in ever widening circles.

Q: Why do people attend BuildingEnergy?

A: It’s the 35th anniversary of the show so, suffice to say, BE10 has demonstrated staying power. Attendees tell us this is the show to attend to get real information, real solutions, and tangible “how- tos.” We offer no-nonsense information about products and are willing to share what worked and what didn’t. BE10’s information is completely unbiased – we’re a non-profit organization and no one is paying us to say anything good about a product or system. And that’s the way we like it!

For more information, and to register online, visit the BuildingEnergy10 website.  Thanks to Betsy Pettit, and to NESEA's Jo Lee for permission to reprint this article.