AIA2030 Reporting Feedback Thread

Full disclosure to everyone that I am co-chairing the AIA 2030 Working Group this year but will keep any responses from this group confidential. ashley mulhall SENIOR ASSOCIATE AIA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, EDAC orcutt | winslow PHOENIX • NASHVILLE • DALLAS/FORT WORTH 2929 n central ave • eleventh floor • phoenix az 85012 602.257.1764 t | 480.862.4502 c | www.owp.com FACEBOOK • TWITTER • INSTAGRAM From: Allis

All - Likewise, while I am on the Working Group I will also maintain confidentiality. Thanks Rachel Rachel Bannon-Godfrey VP, Sustainability Discipline Leader: Buildings (303) 547-7557

Echoing the commentary on the other thread about the challenges with baselines, especially for multi-family residential developments. Figuring out where we are through energy modeling of our projects was relatively straight forward. Knowing that zero or negative numbers are the ultimate goal was important, but that we were not quite there yet with many of our projects. Therefore not knowing exactly what we are measuing against was a big challenge which caused a lot of consternation. That Zero Tool / DDX did not match with our modeling baselines (either through Cove Tool or Equest models) was a big challenge which we spent a lot of time sorting out. Overall positive, but baselines have been a challenge for years. Now that we are also modeling Embodied Carbon, I envision we will have these same baseline challenges in that arena. Again want to be at Zero or Negative on embodied, but not there yet.

Thanks for asking for feedback, Aley, and thanks to the Working Group members. While I don't think AIA2030 is perfect, it is certainly a mechanism for making progress and I really appreciate that. Agreed on the baselines. Well over half of our portfolio is lab buildings -- the Laboratory Benchmarking Tool (I2SL, the recommended baseline tool for labs) often does not have an adequate data set for us to "dial in" our projects in a way that makes the baseline truly meaningful, and we unfortunately don't always have a good energy code baseline from our engineers to be able to calculate back to a custom energy code baseline. We also have seen an increase in some relatively 'new' lab typologies in the past couple of years and I don't even have a good idea from our own internal benchmarks yet as to what a reasonable baseline EUI for those labs should look like. I take our "percent reduction" with an extremely large grain of salt. I wonder if firms that are farther along than we are have moved to worrying more about GHG emissions than percent EUI reduction?  I am still in a place where we are trying to track down information from project teams, and that is not where I'd like to be. However, we had a much smoother reporting process this year than last year, more help from teams entering their data in our internal database and far fewer issues getting our batch output into the DDX. That makes me hopeful that our 2022 reporting will also be better -- my goal is to report much more on embodied carbon, fuel sources, and renewables next year. We're also looking at trying to get most of the reporting data output directly from our Revit models, attempting to make everything easier for our teams. It would be extremely helpful if we could commit to a DDX code freeze way earlier than fall/winter of 2022, because trying to get all of our database and reporting strategies aligned, socialized, etc., and then having to scramble to update/revise a few months before reporting is due confuses our project teams.  Some of our engineers (and I think this is wonderful) are also now 2030 Commitment signatories, and we are reporting the same project, twice. A Basecamp thread said that was okay, but since there is no way to indicate that the two projects are the same, it seems to me like it would skew the data. I think it would be really great to be able to tie two firms to the same project -- not to just have access and let me see what they are reporting, but to let one of us tag into the other's reporting as "EOR" or "AOR" or something and have the one project be seen as belonging to both of our portfolios. Our firm is also an SE2050 signatory -- I feel like it would be so awesome to have one database for SE2050, MEP2040, and AIA2030. One database, One Love ;) Once again, I appreciate you all asking for feedback! If anything I've said was misinformed, confusing, or needs further clarification, please feel free to reach out. Thank you! Kim

Hello all, Thank you so much for collecting this feedback. We have been using the Zero Tool. We are just starting the AIA2030 reporting process and learning DDX, and are eager to learn. Will you be able to share the compiled list to this group too? I appreciate everyone's input.  Thank you, Keihly

Thanks for asking for feedback, and I love Kim's suggestion of having AIA2050 under the same "roof" as SE2050 and others. My company only does architecture/interiors, but many of our project teams include signatories to those other commitments and it would be amazing to link the projects. I have no idea how it would be done, though - you'd have to somehow harmonize different firms' naming/numbering conventions and have projects be searchable/identifiable by companies on the same team without compromising privacy? (Hmm...I wonder, as more places in the US are launching building performance standards...what if we could tie into that too...)   I mentioned the baselines struggle, and I'm also dealing with some pre-2017 projects being missing from the DDX entirely (not sure if that's happened to others) - so those things are making it hard to truly merge the DDX/our internal spreadsheet and stop tracking in two places. I'm hopeful that we'll get there, though, the current DDX is so much faster to work with than the previous version! Overall it's a bigger question of how do I make AIA 2030 a useful tool for the firm and not just an exercise in reporting, and easy integration with the DDX is part of that.   

Team, Many of us are in the steering committee for MEP 2040 and will be excited to discuss with the team how do we harmonize all these to one song book together. Best,
LL

All,   This is a great thread and much needed spirit to leverage broad AEC data collection and public benchmarking. ZGF has been brainstorming with Building Transparency towards open-source methods to database and report AIA DDx data or any carbon data. Some thoughts shared earlier in the year with the AIA DDx team: Strategies for improved data collection, management, and DDx upload:

1. Expand API to include all data fields
2. Share Schema for DDx databased tables
3. Publish an excel template at the start of the reporting year that mimics all DDx options & formulas for in-house tracking.
4. Allow firms to push and fetch data from a database like SQL to DDx
5. Allow 3^rd party Embodied carbon data reporting to AIA DDX (similar process with 3^rd party energy model tools)
6. Work with industry experts like Building Transparency to codify embodied carbon data collection
7. Add functionality to the bulk upload process to prevent partial upload, allow undo, and/or a sandbox for testing.

  Best, Marty

Thanks Allison for taking this on and aggregating the group's feedback back to AIA2030!

Thanks for soliciting feedback, I know I’m late in getting this in. Overall I hope the DDX tracking data, COTE Top Ten Toolkit/Framework for Design Excellence, and best practice continue to inform each other and align each other. I also hope that AIA is transitioning every year toward meaningful carbon emissions tracking as the DDX is a great learning platform for architects to understand what is important. Specifically: 1. I was unable to set the home screen to report projects to be tracked this year (default sort by reporting year to 2021). With several clicks I could set that up each time, but why wouldn’t it be the default? Or why couldn’t I set it as my default? 2. I couldn’t seem to get a report on progress until I had submitted the portfolio. I would have liked to do that. 3. The embodied carbon reporting is a great start, and I hope as we advance each year the embodied carbon reporting becomes more comprehensive and relevant, coordinated with MEP 2040 and SE 2050 research. It could also consider building reuse per the CARE tool and the necessity of building off-site renewable energy in the embodied carbon equation even if off-site renewable energy is not purchased…in my understanding any new building provides a demand for new renewable energy and should have that count against embodied carbon. This may not be a popular opinion. 4. The AIA should decide what % reduction calculation includes to align with Arch 2030 Challenge targets. Currently it appears to include on- and off-site renewable energy. Off-site renewable energy should be extremely clear about not including RECs-only purchases of off-site as these are inexpensive and only partially a renewable energy purchase. Off-site could be decremented as per ASHRAE 228P. Ideally time of use would eventually be considered using Cambium projections over the next 20-30 years based on ‘balancing region.’ I’m also not sure if the AIA ddx would consider renewable energy offsetting fossil fuel combustion on site, if that would be a ‘net zero’ building or not because the kWh/kBtus sum to zero. The 2030 Challenge is basically an energy reduction in fossil fuel energy, with zero fossil fuel energy being acceptable in 2030 and 20% or so offsite energy being acceptable then. We could track toward their metrics more directly. And apologies if I’m misinterpreting their intent…the 2030 Challenge is not as easy to understand as it seems at first. 5. Currently an inefficient building design with lots of renewable energy is considered 100% energy use reduction. We as a profession need to find a way to sort through this, as efficiency needs to come first. An inefficient building with lots of solar outsources lots of cost to the grid to build in storage and peaker plants. So efficiency-first metric, and perhaps a second that includes renewable energy. It gets better every year, keep up the good work! Kjell @Kim – every year I post a method we use for getting the baseline of a project such as a lab, convention center, transit building, or other that is simply not available or not accurate in CBECS or ZeroTool. Compare the energy modeling % savings against the code (perhaps ASHRAE 90.1-2010) and the DDx’s reported savings against the CBECS baseline. So if the DDX suggests that a code is 40% better than CBECS 2003, and your building is 20% better than the code, you have 1-(1-40%)*(1-20%) = 52% better than CBECS. Caveat: energy modelers have an incentive to over-estimate % savings against code. The Seattle code requires energy modeling results to be at least 7% better than the baseline energy model to adjust for this. From: Kimberly Reddin