The following interview was conducted by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) with John F. Straube, Ph.D., P.Eng., a building science engineer with Building Science Corporation and a faculty member in the Department of Civil Engineering and the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo, 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: The focus of your company seems to be preventing and resolving problems related to building design, construction, and operation. What’s a typical circumstance under which you’d be hired?
A: We are hired before construction by teams that want to avoid problems and/or reach high performance goals. We are hired afterwards, when there are problems. We also do a lot of work in Research and Development for new products and systems.
Q: You teach Civil Engineering at the University of Waterloo. How would you compare what the US is doing and what Canada is doing when it comes to issues of sustainability?
A: In terms of sustainability, the US and Canada are rather similar in broad terms, although different in terms of the types of programs employed and what they focus on. For example, Ontario is using Feed in Tariffs as a stimulus for PV (like Germany) rather than tax credits and providing direct grants to aid energy efficiency retrofits. But “greenwashing” – such as focusing on bamboo floors and concrete counters rather than delivering energy efficiency and durability – is alive and well in both nations.
Q: How do you define “the optimal design” for a building? What does that mean, exactly?
A: Optimal means the best mix of characteristics. It is rarely best to focus only on healthy spaces, on durability, energy efficiency, affordability, renewable energy supply or natural building materials. Buildings are more complex than that. So, an optimal building is one that fails at no one important category, but does a pretty good job at all.
Q: Your session at BE09 was extremely popular. What was the session about, and why do you think it became a “must attend”?
A: My session described the deep energy retrofit of my own house. I think people like to see the nuts and bolts of real projects: NESEA attendees tend to be pretty engaged and aware of the big picture, they want to go to the next level and see details. Since I was talking about my own home, people got to see what compromises I made, how much money I spent, and how much focus I placed on different priorities.
Q: What is your role at BE10?
A: I am doing another case study presentation on a 5 story, mixed-used infill building which had a very tight budget and high performance aspirations, and another on using relatively simple 2D models to calculate thermal bridging. I also hope to do a Tuesday workshop on low-energy buildings: a detailed and packed session that covers enclosures and mechanical systems.
Q: What do you get out of attending BE10? Who should attend the show, and why, in your opinion?
A: NESEA is a great place to connect with people who are actually on the ground building great buildings in the Northeastern US. Each time I leave, my memories are about the impromptu discussions I have over coffee with people that get me thinking, who help me identify a problem or a solution, or reassure me that I am not the only one who cares about low-energy buildings.
Q: Is there a particular product or technology at BE10 you are excited to learn more about? Or a conference session or workshop?
A: There are always a few products that surprise me: I go to the tradeshow to discover these, not to investigate ones I already know about. There are so many sessions that interest me, it is really choosing between the multiple tracks that can be so difficult. The sessions on measuring/reporting performance, airtightness testing of large buildings, case studies. Oh, the choices!
For more information, and to register online, visit the BuildingEnergy10 website. Thanks to John Straube, and to NESEA's Jo Lee for permission to reprint this article.
Comments
Passive methods are inevitably the best for conserving energy, and if worked into the initial design are inevitably the most cost effective to implement. There is nothing worse than trying to cure the ills of poor initial design.
John Straube sounds like a very knowledgeable man, and I would like to see what he did with the deep energy retrofit of his own house, cost being the major factor.
Posted by Sheila @ Swiftheat on Aug 24, 2010 8:35amSheila--the Presentations section of Building Science Corp's website has John's presentation. Go to 2009 Presentations/NESEA BuildingEnergy09/What Would John Straube Do?
Posted by Peter Troast on Aug 24, 2010 12:39pm