Remember when gas stoves became a political issue last year? While all that public debate was happening, there were chefs around the world embracing the concept of all-electric kitchens and getting past the learning curve to induction cooking.

We don’t hear about gas stoves in the news as much as we used to, but kitchen electrification will always be a hot topic here at Buildings + Beyond! In this episode, we invited Chef Christopher Galarza back to the podcast to talk about the progress being made to transform more commercial kitchens into efficient, safe, and climate-friendly spaces. Chris brought Duke Gastiger, who built a net zero, all-electric commercial kitchen at his farm restaurant, to join the conversation.

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Maryland is implementing a state-wide Building Energy Performance Standard (BEPS) for buildings 35,000 square feet and over as a requirement under the Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022. The proposed regulations have also established benchmarking and reporting deadlines for covered buildings. These regulations were first published in December 2023, followed by a new draft (PDF) in July 2024.

Let’s take a look at what we know so far about this new BEPS in the Mid-Atlantic region. (more…)

Accessibility consultants work at the intersection of architecture and social justice. It’s much more than checking the boxes on accessibility requirements of laws and codes; it takes precision, dedication, and creativity to solve problems and remove physical barriers to access that have historically marginalized people with disabilities.

To mark the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, we invited three members of the accessibility team at Steven Winter Associates (SWA) on the Buildings + Beyond podcast. Combined, they have almost 40 years of experience as accessibility consultants! We hope you’re as inspired as we are by their wisdom (yes, wisdom; we talk a lot about this), lessons learned, and stories from the field.

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The number of multifamily residential projects targeting Passive House certification has been rising steadily over the past decade, bringing along many exciting challenges.

This has been especially prevalent in New York City, where increasingly stringent energy standards and a desire for innovation have made designing to Passive House standards an attractive goal.

As the number of Passive House projects passing through our offices in New York City; Washington, DC; Boston; and Norwalk, CT continues to grow, we have seen some important overlaps with one of our other consulting services: accessibility compliance.

In the United States, multifamily new construction projects consisting of four or more dwelling units are subject to the Fair Housing Act, as well as state, city, and local accessibility laws and codes. Projects targeting Passive House certification must comply fully with all applicable accessibility requirements.

In this blog post, we will focus on projects in NYC—although most newly constructed residential projects across the country will be subject to some variation of the criteria discussed below, for both Passive House and accessibility standards. (more…)

We like to say that a building is not sustainable if it does not sustain the health and wellbeing of all its occupants. This includes considering how the materials, technologies, and building systems affect indoor air quality, comfort, and the physical and mental health of those utilizing the space.

In our post-COVID world, it also includes how a building can protect its occupants from viruses and other airborne illnesses.

We’re sharing real-world examples of how SWA consultants have helped to mitigate potential negative impacts on occupant health in high-performance buildings. (more…)

On the very first episode of Buildings + Beyond, Passive House pioneer Lois Arena answered the most common questions asked about meeting the high-performance requirements of the Passive House standard. You loved the episode—it’s one of our most popular of all time—and we loved recording with Lois. So, 6 years later, we decided to record a highly anticipated follow-up episode.

Listen as host Robb Aldrich poses the same 10 questions from the original episode, and a few new ones, to Lois and Dylan Martello—who both work on first-of-their-kind, largescale Passive House projects at Steven Winter Associates. What answers have remained the same, and what has changed in the last 6 years?

Click here to listen to the original episode.

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The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began revising its Indoor AirPlus (IAP) specification for homes and residential buildings in early 2020. Since the first drafts of version 2, several factors have shaped the new standard, including the public’s hyper-awareness of indoor air quality (IAQ) during and post COVID, input from strategic partners, and considerations from multiple public comments.

The goal to improve IAQ across new and existing housing while addressing affordability and expanding access to healthy housing among disadvantaged populations will not change.

But a lot will change for building designers, developers, owners, and property managers that earn the Indoor AirPlus label for their buildings.

For starters, the program will now be written as Indoor AirPlus (previously “airPLUS”), and there are two levels of certification: Certified and Gold. EPA anticipates that version 2 will be available for use in fall 2024, and version 1 will be sunset in January 2026. During this overlap period, partners may opt to use either version.

Below, we’ve summarized the changes to expect from Indoor AirPlus version 2. (more…)

In case you missed it, emergency legislation has extended the DC third-party data verification deadline to July 1, 2024.

In the past few months, SWA has helped Washington, DC, building owners complete mandatory third-party benchmarking data verification for 2023 calendar year data. With the deadline extended, now is a good time to talk about the recurring issues we’ve seen and the lessons we’ve learned.

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The International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) or “model code” establishes the minimum requirements for building energy efficiency. The code is updated every three years, and for 2024, a new consensus-driven development process brought together diverse stakeholders to determine those requirements.

However, the International Code Council’s Board of Directors recently voted to go against consensus and remove mandatory provisions relating to building decarbonization from the 2024 draft.

In this episode, host Robb Aldrich interviews Gayathri Vijayakumar, Principal Mechanical Engineer at Steven Winter Associates and a voting member of the 2024 IECC Residential Consensus Committee, to find out… what happened?

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When is it the right call to improve the energy efficiency of existing building systems, or upgrade and electrify them?

Though electrification is important to reduce carbon emissions, electrifying buildings is not straightforward. Factors like cost, existing infrastructure, compliance needs (and we’ll say it again: cost!) can keep building owners from going all-electric.

In this episode, Buildings + Beyond co-host Robb Aldrich catches up with Ryan Merkin, Vice President of Business Development at BlocPower (and a SWA alum). They discuss the eight areas Ryan considers when deciding to focus on efficiency vs. electrification:

• Building height
• Planned capital expenditures (CapEx)
• Current system condition and remaining useful life
• Heating energy source: oil and electrical resistance
• Existing systems: Individual/unitized vs. central
• Packaged terminal ACs (PTACs) and through-wall sleeve ACs
• Regulatory drivers (LL97, ESG, etc.) and incentives
• Metering: who pays what now; who would pay in the future

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