Well, I just made it up – just now. It’s not a new concept by any means; I’m applying it to lighting, although I suppose you could apply it to just about anything. It’s about efficiency and utility: how much of something do you get versus how much you lose, and is it worth it?

More specifically, with lighting, how much light do you get out of a fixture from all the light generated inside the fixture? For example, let’s say that you have a downlight that has a lamp in it (it doesn’t matter what lamp for the sake of this argument, but let’s just say that it’s an efficient one). The fixture efficiency of that downlight is the ratio of how much light exits the fixture (ideally in the direction that you want it to) to how much light that lamp can produce overall. Most downlights have fixture efficiencies somewhere around 50%, meaning half of that light is lost inside the ceiling.

So how does this become a rule? The rule is that you should use more fixtures that have greater than 50% fixture efficiency than those that have less than 50% efficiency – otherwise you’re wasting more light than you’re using. This may seem fairly obvious when you consider it, but I doubt that you look at it this way when creating a design. I’m describing this theory as a rule of thumb – and giving it a name to remember it by – to put a subconscious bell in your mind, intended to start ringing when you’re designing.

Seems straightforward, right? Not exactly. There are a ton of light fixtures out there that piddle around in the 30% range, barely letting any light out at all. They’ve been evolving over the years and include a lot of very sleek and narrow fixtures that have high aesthetic appeal, or have a very specific purpose, like a tight beam of light from a tiny hole in the ceiling. Efficiency hasn’t always been a big part of that evolution, and while some of those fixtures do have a time and place, they are used all too frequently. Have you ever specified or used one of those two-inch-wide light fixtures in your designs? Lots of manufacturers have them – nothing new there. But have you looked at their efficiency? It’s often less than 50%. That means that more than half of that energy is wasted.

In the bigger building-wide picture too, any energy that doesn’t get out is not only wasted, but also turned into heat, which needs to be removed by air conditioning, which uses even more energy. So the wasted energy exceeds usable energy even further.

Of course, if a fixture passes 50% efficiency, that doesn’t mean you should stop there. If there is another fixture 20% more efficient, which produces quality light in the way you want it to, all the better. Every little watt counts.

How, then, do we measure worth? It’s subjective, and hard to precisely define. Ask yourself what you want to do and what tools you can use to do it. If your goal is to light a private office, and you have a choice between that two-inch-wide slot or a four-inch-wide version with twice the efficiency, I would argue that two out of three of your goals are met by using the wider version: lighting the space, energy efficiency, but maybe not as sexy. If you choose the narrower fixture, can you say the same? Maybe that wider fixture is starting to look sexier now?

There will always be some applications that really do have very specific solutions, and that’s why this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. It’s merely a tipping of the scales – worse or better, overall.

Take this example: two identical private offices with the same design goals – illuminate to 30 footcandles average, and use less than one watt per square foot. One office is lit with 60% efficient fixtures; the other with 30% efficient fixtures. Both offices achieve almost the same light levels, and both meet the power code requirement. The one that uses the less efficient fixture uses twice as much power, and twice as many fixtures, to do the same thing. Then there’s also the added cost of lamps, ballasts, installation, and maintenance.

Now, one may ask: ‘who cares how efficient it is if it does the job and meets code?’ The U.S. Department of Energy does! Energy usage in buildings will only continue to be restricted, so we simply have to be more efficient in order to continue to meet code requirements. And, it’s the difference of just a few local kWh in your building; if you assume that every building in the country has some waste in them like yours, and add that all up, it could mean that whole power plants are operating just to satisfy that waste. It makes that much of a difference.

So, my plea to the design community is that if less than half the energy that goes into a fixture gets out of it in it’s intended form, then it behaves more like a trap than a delivery method – so use it sparingly. Some may argue that you can’t use many inefficient fixtures anyway because the codes are already too strict – otherwise you’d end up with under-illuminated spaces. But most of us are more reactionary, and only cut or change something if we find out that we’re over code-allowed watts, essentially using all the available energy we can. Try to be proactive and make the design more efficient than not from the outset. Let’s not build the least energy-efficient buildings the law allows – we can do better.

Photo Credit: Sleeping Sun

But is the current energy code the best way to save energy? Is lowering the allowable maximum connected load for lighting even enough to get us the savings we need to meet the national energy goals of 2030? Probably not.

Over the past decade, the allowable lighting power densities (LPD) have been lowered time and time again, sometimes logically, and other times less so. The mantra has been to increase energy savings by lowering the amount of connected electric lighting load – end users are then free to turn that connected load on and off at any time. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t account for real usage. How energy-efficient is a low-power lighting solution if it stays on all the time?

For example, take a typical ten-foot-square office space with 1.0 watt per square foot allowable LPD. You can use up to 100 watts in that particular office. Now, if you leave that office light on for 24 hours (i.e. you forgot to hit the switch on the way out), you’d have 240 watt-hours (that’s 0.24kW-h on your energy meter). But not everyone forgets to turn off their lights, so that scenario is the worst case.

A lighting design can thus easily be checked against the code while still on paper, and this is pretty straightforward, but it doesn’t take into account how the end user will use that lighting. The lighting is designed for a maximum load at a single point in time (power), but is then measured as energy (power x time) – there’s a disconnect between the design and the application. The kicker is that there is no simple real-world method to check or enforce codes once a space is occupied. Owners are free to burn the midnight electrons and no one will say boo about it.

Now take that same office space but, instead of designing only for power allowances, you design it for power and time. What if you make an allowance for the lighting to be on for only 12 hours per day (a standard assumption for all but the craziest workaholic American). You could use the same 100 watts but the total energy used is now half that of the worst-case scenario. What if that same office has windows and daylight dimming, and the lighting is only on for 4 hours each day, just 40 watt-hours – we just went from half to one-sixth of the energy used!

So how do we predict how occupants will use lighting, and how can we make sure they then keep using it as intended? Mandates and accountability. As much as we’d like to assume that everyone will hit the light switch on the way out, that’s a bit too much wishful thinking. Cost is no deterrent, either – major corporations have money they seem happy to spend, and with the cost of energy artificially low in this country, there’s not much incentive.

There’s a growing movement in the code world to actually factor anticipated duration of use into the equation, measuring compliance in kilowatt-hours rather than just watts. We’ll always need to reference watts in our design process, but eventually we’ll have squeezed out all the watts we can, and it still won’t be enough. Adding time into the equation doesn’t immediately guarantee energy savings, but it does put it in terms that we can identify, relate to, track, and react to. It’s time to think more about energy, and less about power.

Photo Credit: Steve Ryan

With the onset of the holiday season, we have also come to the end of the three-year energy code development season. The new 2010 version of ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1 has been published, and IECC-2012 will be published in April 2011. (No, that’s not a typo. IECC-2012 will be published in 2011. Don’t ask, I have no idea.)

It will be a while – years, probably – before IECC-2012 is adopted by states, and at least a year before 90.1-2010 is incorporated into LEED, but the code development community is already looking towards the next versions of these model energy codes: 90.1-2013 and IECC-2015. So, while designers are currently practicing under energy codes that are at least three years old, code geeks have their heads three years in the future. So, what gifts might the next code development season bring us?

Watch the IECC

Historically, the IECC relied on 90.1 for energy code content. With IECC-2012, the IECC lighting section takes on a life of its own. Expect that trend to continue. While 90.1 will likely remain influential, since the IECC is the actual code that states adopt, the IECC may be where the action is in the future.

Stretch Your Codes

Energy codes only set a minimum acceptable performance (the worst possible building that you can legally build?). Institutions, corporations, and governments that understand this are looking for ways to push their energy use even lower. One way to do this is with “stretch codes” such as the Massachusetts Stretch Energy Code which has been adopted by over forty Massachusetts communities. This Stretch Code is an appendix to IECC-2009 that increases stringency.

Another way to go beyond the minimum is through green building codes such as the new International Green Construction Code (IGCC). Green building codes are intended to have energy performance provisions that are more stringent than base energy codes. Because of this, new energy regulation ideas are being proposed in the IGCC development process. Keeping an eye on the development of the IGCC’s energy chapter may give us an idea of what future energy codes will look like.

These advanced code programs, if adopted widely, will make the designer’s job more complex. Not only will they have to keep track of the applicable energy code in each state, but they will have to know if the municipality is using a stretch energy code or has adopted a green building code with its own separate energy provisions. And they may struggle to design to different and potentially conflicting requirements.

Squeeze Out More – a Lot More!

The pressure is on and will almost certainly continue for the energy codes to be more “efficient”. For the last code cycle, the goal was 30% more “efficient” than 90.1-2004. We don’t know what the target off of 90.1-2010/IECC-2012 will be, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a proposed target of 30%. Those of us who have been thinking about this don’t see how this will be possible with typical building technology, design solutions, and energy code methodology.

Lighting Power Density is currently the preeminent tool for regulating lighting energy use. The push for more efficiency in codes means pressure to lower LPDs even more. But barring an unforeseen leap in technology, we can probably only squeeze a little bit more out of LPDs if we are to maintain high-quality lighting. We may be able to eke out some more savings by expanding even further the requirements for occupancy sensors and daylight responsive controls. But how do we make big reductions – 30%, 50%, eventually all the way down to net-zero?! Daylighting.

In order to significantly reduce lighting energy use, we’re going to have to really use daylight to extensively light our buildings. If codes require this, a radical change in mindset will need to take place – resulting in major changes in building footprints, orientation, and envelope design.

Guaranteeing the Outcomes?

If energy codes are supposed to reduce building energy use, then shouldn’t we be directly regulating it? The common prescriptive code methods use blunt instruments such as LPDs, minimum equipment efficiencies, and R-values to affect how a building is designed. These methods do indirectly affect the energy use of the building, but the energy use itself (how the building is operated) is not regulated.

In an ideal world, the energy code should just tell us what the end result needs to be, and let us decide how to get there. Expect to hear more about EUI (Energy Use Intensity), measured in kBtu per square foot per year. An effective building energy performance-based code will require more robust, but easier to use, energy modeling software. It will also require a change in the way we design buildings – with a truly integrated design process where the whole design team is working together to get the most out of a limited building energy budget.

EUI may be the way to make the codes much more “efficient” and still allow high-quality buildings to be built – but many details, such as dealing with occupancy/operating hours, will have to be worked out. Look for energy codes to start requiring a building energy performance method for buildings of certain types or sizes.

Even if you perform complete energy modeling, and design to a specific annual building energy use limit, all you are doing is predicting how much energy the building will use on the day it opens, if properly commissioned and operated. Every lighting designer has their horror stories of carefully designed (and expensive!) lighting control systems that were never commissioned and/or operated correctly, leaving all the lights on, even when daylight is streaming in or when no one is around. The building meets energy code, but if it isn’t operated correctly and becomes an energy guzzler, then the code is ineffective. Realizing this, code geeks are starting to look at “outcome-based” codes.

An outcome-based code might require building owners to certify actual annual energy use. How will an outcome-based code be enforced? Will buildings someday need to get an annual energy certificate just like an elevator or health department inspection? And what would the penalties be for non-compliance? Will design professionals be held responsible for the performance of a building that they designed but do not operate?

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

As you can see, energy codes are likely to get tougher, get more complicated, and adopt unfamiliar new methods. Building design professional organizations such as the IALD, AIA, IES, and ASHRAE are all actively involved with energy code development. If you are interested in getting involved with code development and are a member of one of these organizations, you can contribute. Happy holidays!

Photo Credit: Phillie Casablanca

Recently a lighting company came into our office to show us their new LED fixture. I prepared myself for the usual spiel: tight quality binning, a high-performance heat sink, ELV dimming option. However, this particular fixture had been designed in a way that we haven’t seen from many other companies: the entire fixture, an LED cove/grazer product, was actually designed along sustainable manufacturing principles. Its connected load is more energy-efficient than that of its fluorescent counterparts (finally), but more impressively, the materials used to construct it had been thought through in a way few other products seem to manage.

The housing was not anodized aluminum, the standard seen in LED fixtures required for heat dissipation, but a zinc-based alloy that is less energy-intensive to make, and requires none of the toxic anodizing processes. The fixture is highly segmented for adaptability, and all components may easily be removed if failure occurs, allowing for easy replacement of parts. I was shocked.

Two years ago, before I left Lam Partners to pursue a Masters of Architecture at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture, white LEDs were standard in steplights and other specialty fixtures, but only just catching on in mainstream lighting design, with a few linear fixtures, floods and downlights. Those fixtures were not terribly competitive at the time.

Since returning to the firm for the summer, at least once a week a manufacturer has come to promote their new LED products. As one lighting manufacturer’s representative correctly noted, I’ve stepped into the future. The once over-priced and under-performing LEDs now stand beside traditional sources, and in many cases outperform them; costs are dropping while efficiencies continue to rise.

The LED revolution is obviously the greatest thing since sliced bread, the introduction of fluorescence, or of incandescence before that. But just as growing pains occurred at those phase-changes, this revolution too has seen a dark side. In this new world, the slightly ignorant marketer walks into our conference room spouting how their fixture is ‘sustainable’ simply because it uses LEDs, or maybe includes some recycled decorative glass. It seems fair to say that many manufacturers misuse the term ‘sustainable’ as a marketing ploy, with mixed knowledge of what is needed to create truly sustainable products.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised when this particular company actually walked the walk. They’ve produced a product that begins to address some unspoken facts of the lighting industry: lighting fixtures require vast quantities of energy to produce, ship, and install, and poorly designed fixtures equal waste.

The discourse on life-cycle costing was made popular by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book “Cradle to Cradle,” and for some manufacturers of architectural materials, it transformed the way in which their product is conceived, produced, bought, and utilized. Moreover, the general adoption of LEED standards has greatly influenced the purchasing power of clients, who, through their architects, now regularly seek architectural products that account for embodied energy in some way, such as sustainably harvested wood or recycled or re-purposed metals.

However, LEED does not currently allow MEP equipment to count toward credits for material usage, with the understanding that the material quantities are considered negligible, they are not permanent to the architecture, and ultimately their ability to efficiently use energy trumps any material concerns. This seems like a missed opportunity, as the material in MEP equipment is hardly insignificant, and in many cases could comprise recycled or re-purposed materials.

While operational energy accounts for the amount of energy consumed (power x time) by the product during use, embodied energy represents energy required to produce and transport the fixture, and how that energy becomes ‘trapped’ when the product enters the waste stream. A brick, for instance, has a relatively low embodied energy, requiring only the energy to collect the clay, fire it, and transport it, and then may be used multiple times before it crumbles and must be reformed (of course never once requiring connected load). The light fixture by comparison must be fabricated from an array of energy-intensive materials, like aluminum, steel, glass, plastics, and mined phosphorous (reserves of which, according to Wikipedia, we’re on track to deplete sometime in the next 100 to 300 years). These materials must then be assembled, requiring additional energy-consuming processes.

The current debate over LED lamps and fixtures exemplifies the necessity to think more constructively about lamp/fixture embodied energies and life-cycle costs. This is a two-part issue. First, LEDs are finding homes as retrofits: replacement lamps for old fixtures, and complete fixture replacements (as have also been seen with compact fluorescent or metal halide retrofits). If the fixture must be completely removed, the old product is often sent to the landfill, and in large-scale retrofits, this may be quite a sizable quantity of wasted metals.

Secondly, in the rush to get products out to market (for both retrofit and new construction), many manufacturers have created LED products with no option to replace failed components in the field, notably LED boards and drivers. Manufacturers tend to argue that, in order to achieve the desired output and long life, LED boards must be permanently attached to their heat-sinks, usually with some sort of thermal glue. This then gets extended to additional aspects of the fixture, including housings or reflectors. Apparently, to most manufacturers, in some glorious undetermined future utopia we won’t even have to worry about waste disposal… LEDs will last until our civilizations have long since perished, so it’s not even worth bothering with end-of-life issues. Unfortunately this leaves the end user with only one option when the fixture does, some time in the next 20 years (a brief blip in the realistic lifespan of a building), fail: completely remove the dead fixture and replace it with a new one. No governing body exists that demands that old MEP or lighting equipment be recycled or re-used in any way, so the manufacturer is off the hook.

One manufacturer suggested, as an option until they “figure out their policy on refurbishing dead fixtures”, that the specifier add the phone number of an ‘approved’ recycler into the notes column of the fixture specification, for the end user to contact at failure. This option certainly plays into the notion of American capitalism, but it is ultimately laziness on the part of the manufacturer. I would much rather put a note into the fixture schedule recommending that the end user contact the manufacturer or local representative to buy a replacement, at a discount in return for the dead fixture (assuming the fixture dies after the warranty period).

The manufacturer should be thrilled at this concept. They potentially regain a host of usable parts, which should be refurbishable, and moreover, they retain the business of the customer. This is already happening in the computer industry, as an alternative to shipping dead electronics to third-world countries where workers strip equipment under highly hazardous conditions.

For example, I currently have a three-year-old Macbook Pro. Still works, but running slow, and I’ll need to upgrade soon for school. Recently I went onto Apple’s website, and found that I could get a quote for my old laptop based on the model and working quality of specific parts (even if it was dead for some reason, I’d still get money back). By offering a trade-in for my old laptop that can be put toward the purchase of a new computer, Apple is not only able to recapture the energy they spent creating the old one (which can be refurbished and resold, or stripped for individual components), but they also retain my business for the new product.

Granted, Apple’s ubiquitous presence in local retail far exceeds that of any fixture manufacturer, so an alternative might involve local lighting representatives to build up quantities before shipping, which suggests that buying local MEP equipment also matters. Regardless, few if any lighting manufacturers have thus far marketed their products in this way.

The push to create highly energy-efficient, long-lasting LED replacements for inefficient technologies does allow for minimization of waste. But countless inefficient light fixtures are currently being pulled from ceilings in an effort to reduce energy consumption, arriving either in landfills (to be mined by future generations) or at recycling plants that must perform energy-intensive procedures to recapture materials. I would like to see future companies retrofitting old light fixtures with new light source technologies in the factory setting, and selling them alongside ‘new’ products. I look forward to the day when a high-visibility architectural project has only refurbished light fixtures installed. It may be my project.

Post-Script

As I implore manufacturers and lighting designers to consider life cycle as well as aesthetics and connected-load performance, the following are recommendations I would like to see incorporated into the ethos of the lighting industry:

To the Manufacturers:

In order to meet current LEED criteria pertaining to lighting, lighting must be incorporated into a design by an experienced design professional who is able to balance connected load energy usage and reduce light pollution across a complete layout of fixtures. In no way can an individual fixture really “help meet LEED” on its own terms. Blanket statements like these reveal the manufacturer as using jargon and marketing instead of truly attempting to make sustainable products.

Regardless of current LEED criteria, every material choice within a lighting product requires energy for production and disposal, beyond just connected load. These choices will begin to matter more to consumers in coming years. Prove that your fixtures were created sustainably, shipped sustainably, and can easily adapt to changes in technology or component failure for the lifetime of the architecture.

Components that may fail must be replaceable without requiring costly and wasteful entire fixture assemblies. When a fixture truly reaches the end of its useful life, provide robust programs that allow end users to return fixtures beyond warranty periods for rebates on replacements. Refurbishing the components of dead fixtures equal potential savings by keeping highly usable materials out of the landfill.

If in fact your products do go the distance, market these specifications! Is the fixture made of 100% recycled aluminum? Put that on the spec sheet! Can the plastics be disassembled and recycled? Clearly stamp those materials with the well-known ‘recyclable’ symbol with material type (in a location that will not affect light performance).

And finally, or course all manufacturers should commit to ‘greening’ operations and products – but do not roll out one product as your ‘sustainable fixture’ without also providing a plan to overhaul the rest of your product line and manufacturing operations. It’s hypocritical.

To the Designers:

Why not specify refurbished lighting products? Must the back-of-house troffers be made of pristine aluminum? Actively look for ways to minimize not only watts, but material-heavy fixtures, with preference given to the lighter, refurbished, or recycled products. Minimize the use of fixtures made from materials with energy-intensive or toxic manufacturing processes.

How can the architecture itself serve as a lighting system? Thoughful design can allow for replacement of the minimum quantity of material when technology changes, and allows renewable materials to do some of the lighting work, such as in valances or coves.

Finally, demand more from your product manufacturers. Lighting may be a relatively small piece of the puzzle, but it’s the piece over which you have control. Make the most of it. Specify high-performance sustainability.

Photo Credits: Dan Weissman / Lam Partners Inc

Readers of this blog have already heard about the new Green Building codes, but there are new versions in the works, both of the energy code standard ASHRAE/IES 90.1, and of the International Conservation Code (IECC). What will these codes look like, and how will they affect the work of architectural lighting designers?

The 2010 version of ASHRAE/IES 90.1 will be published this fall. Standard 90.1 is the benchmark model energy code. Although rarely adopted directly as code, it is an alternative path for IECC compliance; it’s also the energy performance reference for both the US Department of Energy and the LEED rating systems, and is highly influential, like California’s Title 24, as a trendsetter.

ASHRAE’s goal for the 2010 version of 90.1 is to be 30% more stringent than the 2004 version. Standard 90.1-2010 will have lighting power allowances that are significantly lower than the 2004 and 2007 versions. Additionally, there will be many new controls requirements such as mandatory use of occupancy sensors in some spaces, incentives for daylight responsive controls, exterior lighting after-hours shut-off, and controls commissioning requirements, among other things.

The IECC is currently in the middle of its three-year development cycle. IECC-2012 will be published in April 2011. The goal of the Department of Energy and other stakeholders in IECC development is for IECC-2012 to be 30% more stringent than the 2006 version. It’s a little early to know for sure what will be in the next version, but expect reduced power allowances, and the addition of a space-by-space method for determining lighting power densities. Another concept that’s been proposed is the “Additional Efficiency Package Options”. To comply, the project will have to pick one option from a menu of energy-efficiency provisions like more efficient mechanical equipment, onsite renewable energy, or reduced lighting power allowances.

But here’s the thing to keep in mind: even though these new standards will be published soon, they don’t become code until they are adopted by individual states. By federal law, the DOE must evaluate each new version of 90.1 to determine if it is more efficient than the previous version (and because IECC offers 90.1 as an alternative compliance path, it piggybacks on the DOE determination). If the standard is found to be more efficient (and it will be), states are required to adopt an equally stringent code within two years.

But, enforcing this provision and getting the states to adopt the latest code is easier said than done. Currently, only ten states have adopted the most recent standard, IECC-2009/90.1-2007. At the other end, eleven states have either no statewide energy code at all, or are using standards older than 90.1-1999. The remaining states use something in between. This lag is typical, but I expect it will decrease, given the global push to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. If states follow the example of my home state of Massachusetts, then code lag will be very short in the future. Last year, Massachusetts not only adopted IECC-2009, but wrote into law that newer versions of the IECC will automatically become code soon after publication.

One school of thought says that these new standards will be overly stringent and will make it impossible for designers to produce quality results. I don’t agree with this opinion. Through my work as Chairman of the IALD Energy and Sustainability Committee, I’m pretty familiar with what is likely to be in these standards. We’ve been working hard to make sure that the codes are as aggressive as possible, but without prohibiting quality design. I believe that the new standards will only codify what any responsible designer should already be doing to reduce the negative environmental impact of their design. And, I do not think that they will prevent us from producing effective, comfortable, and beautiful spaces.

Yes, it will be harder. The “cushion” will be gone; we will have to be very careful with our use of energy in order to meet code. Competency in lighting design will require deep knowledge of code requirements, the skill to get the most out of limited power budgets, and expertise in lighting controls technology and system design.

Image Credit: D-32

Now that ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1 has been published, it’s time for the building design and construction communities to consider the implications of the new green building codes coming out.

What is a green building code, and why do we need one? Imagine LEED written in code language – site sustainability, water use, energy, indoor environmental quality, materials and resources. We need green building codes because LEED is not a code; it is a voluntary rating system, not a mandatory code.

Many cities and states desire a green building standard that they can apply as code or ordinance, or through “green” legislation. To meet this need, some cities have adopted LEED as a requirement. For example, Boston requires that projects over 50,000 square feet be “LEED certifiable”. The City can’t require you to be officially LEED certified, and because LEED is a points-based rating system, there are many ways to achieve “certifiabilty”. Messy, hard to enforce – LEED is not a legal code and the USGBC does not want it used as a code.

Thus, the motivation for ASHRAE, the USGBC, and the IES to team up and create a green building standard, written in code language and ready to be adopted by any municipal or state government. It has taken several years and four public review drafts to finally get Standard 189.1 on the street. And it is still a work in progress; proposals are already being accepted by ASHRAE for changes to the standard.

Fine, you say? Sounds like a good idea, let’s see what happens? Sorry, it’s not going to be so easy – there is another green building code in the works! Have you heard of the IGCC, the International Green Construction Code? Same idea, but this time from the ICC and the AIA! (The ICC is the International Code Council who brings you the IBC and the IECC) This code has been in the works since last summer and the first draft for public review is expected March 15th. The code will be finalized at the end of next year and published in March 2012.

So what will happen? Which code will be adopted? Will they be adopted at all?

Standard 189.1 has the advantage in that it is already available, a full two years before IGCC will be ready. But the IGCC will be from the “code guys” who provide all the building codes typically being adopted in the US, so perhaps it is a more likely candidate. Worst-case scenario: in three years we have two green building codes being adopted by towns and states scattered across the country. Building design and construction professionals will have to be conversant in two different green building codes – in addition to LEED! And for each city and state we will have to keep track of which code applies, and how it is used. Perhaps one city decides that they will only apply the green code to city-funded projects, or to projects larger than 25,000 square feet, or…?

The other thing to think about is the relationship of green building codes to energy codes. The assumption is that the energy provisions in a green building code are more stringent than the applicable energy code, which would be superseded. But what if a state or locality adopts an energy code that is more stringent than the green building code they have previously adopted? Someone will have to sort this out.

And if your head isn’t already hurting, try this: you are designing a LEED project in a town that has adopted a green building code. So, now you have to design to two different green standards -every design option would have to be tested twice. And you’d have to do the calculations and documentation twice to prove compliance with each provision.

I hope someone at the USGBC is thinking about this. I know that those of us on the IALD’s Energy and Sustainability Committee have been thinking about it. Through our work on standards drafting committees, and through public review commenting, we are striving for consistency between all electric lighting and daylighting related provisions in 189.1, IGCC, and LEED.

But have you heard about CALGREEN, California’s new mandatory Green Building code? Oh, my.

Image Credits: ASHRAE (1), ICC (2), Lam Partners (3)

Lighting systems have gotten vastly more efficient in the last decade. This is thanks to better bulbs, better luminaires and controls, and better lighting design – and let’s all keep working hard to make them even more efficient as technologies and design methods continue to improve. But, let’s also give ourselves a little credit for the great progress that’s already been made. For example, we’re now designing office lighting using one-sixth of the electricity typically used just 25 years ago. Imagine if we had made the same kind of progress with automobiles.

Stop reading for a minute and ask yourself: how much energy do you think you use driving to work, versus how much you use to light your personal share of your workplace? What is just the rough proportion you would guess? Let’s put some numbers to that:

Let’s say you drive a new car at the US average of 16 miles per day each way, and you average the current federal standard, 27.5 miles per gallon. That consumes a bit over a gallon of gas per day.

The same amount of fuel oil, burned in a typical power plant and distributed to your building through the grid, at an overall efficiency of 30%, will generate 14 kilowatt-hours. If you work in a 200-square-foot office and your workspace lighting power conforms to current ASHRAE standards, that gallon or so of gas will light your workspace for over 65 hours. Or, to put it another way, the fuel you use getting to work each day will light, for ten hours, not just your 200 square feet but actually 1,300 square feet – enough space for you and half a dozen friends.

How is that possible? Well, for one thing, when you stomp the accelerator on your base four-cylinder Accord (177 horsepower), in electrical terms your modest sedan is generating over 130,000 watts, and it’s doing it inefficiently. At that rate, it would take you less than 60 seconds to burn up enough fuel to light your workspace for ten hours.

Actually, our estimate is very conservative. If we get more realistic and factor in the inefficiency of refining and transporting gasoline, and we recognize that new buildings are required to have motion sensors to turn your lights off when you don’t need them, and we also recognize that the average American commuter vehicle doesn’t average anywhere close to 27.5 mpg (okay, and maybe your office is less than 200 square feet), we can come closer to a realistic answer to our initial question. And that answer is that if your workplace meets today’s lighting energy standard, your commute likely uses at least ten times as much fossil fuel as your workspace lighting each day.

So, how did you do on your guess?

Photo Credits: Skippyjon (1), MadMarv00 (2)

Interior honeycomb shades provide privacy and additional insulation, and are a part of the nighttime ambient lighting system in Team Boston's house.

I was fortunate to be able to spend the weekend visiting the Solar Decathlon houses on the Mall in Washington, D.C. (see the Solar Decathlon website and Amber’s last blog article “Curious” About Sustainable Design?).

Miserable weather meant that the houses weren’t generating much electricity, but the energy produced by the students attracted many people like me willing to stand in long lines in the rain and mud to see their work. I was impressed by the sheer immensity of what the students had accomplished (none more so than the Lam-sponsored Team Boston!) and the many ways in which each team solved the same sets of design problems. It was fascinating to see how they balanced the tensions between having to make a highly efficient house that also functions well, would be a nice place to live in, and is beautiful. You could see the compromises: the house that was super-insulated but didn’t have many windows, or the house with large south-facing windows but no architecturally integrated shading to block the summer sun (perhaps because it would have violated the purity of the architecture) – or the house that kept the lighting energy so low that the lighting quality suffered.

Team Boston's southern façade featured an integrated shading overhang and innovative roll-up exterior louvers for no summer solar heat gain.

But the thing that struck me most about the competition was not something I saw on the Mall, but an entry in Thursday’s Daily Journal on the Solar Decathlon website. In describing the winners of the Lighting Design competition, it said: “A Minnesota team member commented that their goal was to use only 500 watts (or the equivalent of five incandescent light bulbs) to light the entire house”. Now, I appreciate the attempt to make the information accessible to the average consumer, but this comment is so telling about the incorrect way that the world considers lighting energy efficiency.

This type of vanity mirror seen in Penn State's bathroom showed up in a few other houses, too. Love the skylights!

The Solar Decathlon is a contest that measures (among many things) energy-efficiency, not total watts. Energy is Watts x Time (see my blog article Fight the Power! ) So I could have 2,000 watts of total lighting in my Solar Decathlon house, but if I only needed to turn some of it on for a small amount of time each day, I could use less energy than a house with 200 watts of total lighting that had to have all the lights on most of the time. If they only measured watts at the Solar Decathlon, then all they’d need to do is hook up the houses to a meter, make them turn on every system and appliance, and the house with the lowest wattage would be the winner. Well, that would be easy – but it would be dumb. So why, then, do we talk about lighting performance this way?!

So there I was on Saturday in one of the houses and a charming student tells us that all their lighting uses only 200 watts. Sigh. And then later that afternoon, in another house a student tells us how their LED fixtures use just 3 watts each. Arrgghh. So OK, we’ve done a bad job educating our students about how to measure lighting energy efficiency, but this also brings up another timely issue: lighting quality. What if you only use 200 watts but lighting quality is poor?

Finelite's LED task lights provide great bedtime reading lights for Team Boston.

And then, as expected, the LEDs were everywhere along with the hype. Several houses proclaimed that all their lighting was LED, as if just saying that indicates some special level of energy efficiency. And of course, as we were told at one house, “LEDs are seven times more efficient than an incandescent light”, when realistically they are maybe half that. Where do they get this stuff? And it’s not just efficiency misinformation, but the lighting quality issue too. Far too often, the LED sources that I observed were glary and had a ghoulish cool color. If the Solar Decathlon is a predictor of trends in residential lighting, then we might conclude that we have a lot of glare in our future.

Another comment I overheard that I thought was telling went something like this, from a gentleman standing below one of those glary LED accent lights: “Gee, if we could only get LEDs that were good for ambient lighting”. I almost went up to him and said, “You have a much better source already – linear fluorescent – twice as efficacious as LED, and much less expensive.” But I kept my mouth shut and wandered out into the rain and mud thinking that we Lighting Designers have to do a much better job educating students and the world about how to achieve true lighting energy efficiency and lighting quality.

Some serious lighting bling from Team Germany.

Photos Credit: Glenn Heinmiller / Lam Partners Inc

A local group of students from the Boston Architectural College and Tufts University are more than just curious. These students have combined creative efforts, engineering skills, and a shared passion to jump-start a wave of curiosity in others; Team Boston was formed to propose, design, and build an actual solar-powered model home. The Curio House took on its motto, “live curious”, to inspire others to seek out energy-saving, sustainable architecture.

Curio is Team Boston’s entry at the upcoming Solar Decathlon, an internationally recognized biannual competition that works to promote, educate, and foster sustainable innovations in building technology. The competition is sponsored by the Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It calls for student groups to build a solar-powered house that will compete in ten categories. The house will be evaluated on its overall energy performance in simulated “daily living” scenarios, on the basis of the quality of its architecture, market viability, engineering, lighting design, communications, indoor comfort, hot water production, appliances, home entertainment, and energy production/consumption through net metering.

The construction site at Tufts University has enjoyed enthusiastic support from other local students, professionals, and community members. Inspired by the students’ bold efforts, and by the innovative nature and challenge of the project, Lam Partners has proudly sponsored Team Boston in their quest for the most energy-efficient solar-powered house at the Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Over the past couple of months we have had the privilege of getting to know and work with some of the dedicated and high-spirited members of Team Boston to help refine and execute their lighting design goals and strategy. We supported their efforts through computer modeling, mock-up studies, and fixture selection advice, and by arranging generous donations from lighting manufacturers. We’ve collaborated with the team to realize a lighting design with high aspirations for the competition.

Curio takes advantage of many energy-saving, green technologies, such as passive solar design, daylighting, a solar thermal hot water system, and a photovoltaic panel array to generate the home’s electricity. The energy-conscious electric lighting system takes advantage of efficient fluorescent and LED fixtures, occupancy sensors, and dimming to further reduce energy use while enhancing occupant comfort.

The lighting portion of the competition focuses on the quality of a functional, efficient, pleasing lighting design. The lighting concept for the main living space expands on the idea of the house as a central space with a lot of user flexibility. The main ambient light is provided by linear LED fixtures concealed in architectural coves that define the perimeter. There are also several instances of task lighting provided throughout the main living area to accommodate various user needs.

Lighting at the exterior is minimal, with LEDs providing soft, appropriate light levels on the ramp surfaces for wayfinding, and LED downlights to highlight the entries. The exterior is lit exclusively with LED sources to minimize energy consumption. This strategy is used to emphasize the energy savings, as well as to enhance the overall perception of the lighting technologies employed throughout the design.

The house is also engineered in such a way that it can be disassembled, transported, and reassembled for competition. Currently Team Boston is disassembling the house and heading to Washington D.C. to finish construction, compete, inspire curiosity, and exhibit their hard work, from October 8th through the 16th.

The Curio House is a great example of learning, refining, and implementing energy-efficient strategies within daily home life. As part of the continuously evolving “green design” movement, the project defines and proposes viable building solutions for sustainable living, such that the future of the house itself is also evolving.

After a rigorous and exciting cycle of competition in D.C., the house will find a permanent home on Cape Cod as one of the first structures in a new green housing development, where it will be able to live out and expand upon its green foundation and ideals. To follow the progress of Live Curio, throughout the competition and beyond, check out the website at http://www.livecurio.us/.

Image Credits: Team Boston (1, 4, 6); Allison Fisk (2, 5), Glenn Heinmiller / Lam Partners Inc (3)

Light pollution and light trespass are hot exterior lighting topics, and they both relate directly to the broader topic of energy conservation. Simple logic tells us that shooting light into the night sky, either directly or inadvertently, is basically a waste of light and energy. The light that escapes above the horizon hits nothing but air, water, and smog. Some of that light is reflected back down as light pollution, that eerie yellow glow that obscures the stars, but none of it is useful – it’s an unutilized byproduct of the artificially illuminated environment.

That’s not a good thing! Sky glow and light trespass have been linked to problems like sleep disorders, migratory bird death, and obstruction of the night sky. Small problems that may seem insignificant? Well, think of it this way: sky glow exposes how much energy and money we pump into the air, and guess who pays for all that extra light – you, the taxpayer! Millions and millions a year, and most of it is powered by fossil fuels.

Can we simply turn off all the exterior lights then? No, unfortunately, the lighting was probably installed in the first place to serve a purpose: the lighting of streets, buildings, parks, and other places that people navigate to at night.

Could we reduce the amount of exterior lighting, though? We can already discern that a lot of lighting is wasted in the sky. Could it also be possible that we’ve intentionally lit that which should not or need not be lit to begin with – that the purpose served was not a legitimate, well-conceived purpose? Absolutely!

Since the invention of the light bulb, we’ve been putting electric lighting EVERYWHERE. We did it because we needed it and wanted it, to see where we were walking and driving (street lighting), to see where we were going (sign lighting), because it looked nice (decorative lighting), to show off our accomplishments (building and bridge lighting), to illuminate nature (tree uplighting), and for security and safety (the former as a police control measure and the latter as a matter of perceived personal well-being).

Now some designers are taking another look at the “why” of design, questioning whether or not we really need all that lighting. Do we need to light a stretch of rural highway when we have headlights on our cars? Do we need to light city centers to 50 lux (5 footcandles for you Imperialists) when 20 will do? It’s not just a question of yes or no, but also of how much.

To take a few of these examples, here are some issues that we should think twice about:

• Street lighting – do we need to light roadways so much that we can do without headlights entirely? (I’ve seen it – no headlights! Insane!) Perhaps we can use the task-ambient approach here: ambient from very low-level street-based systems, and task from headlights. We’ll still need to pay attention to the vehicular-pedestrian intersections but all that lighting in between could possibly be reduced.

• Sign lighting – do you really need to light your signs all night long, from the bottom shining up? What if you turned the sign off after midnight, and lit it from above?

• What about building lighting? Many developers, architects, and designers want to see their projects as the beacon of the neighborhood. Uplights graze the columns, floodlights slam into concrete walls, and twinkly lights adorn the penthouse. Should every building do this, though? Are they entitled to? What if the desire to be the best on the block simply precipitates escalation of building lighting – where does it end? Everyone needs to ask themselves “Should I even light the outside of this building?” That goes for public monuments, too; maybe we should take public money used for lighting public monuments and put it somewhere more useful, like healthcare. How about focusing on the entry and letting the rest go dark at night?

• How about landscape lighting – why? We light the trees and shrubs only because we can. Yes, it does look pretty, but at what expense? The amount of light the canopy of any particular tree can catch in comparison to what shoots straight into the sky is very little.

• And finally, lighting for security and safety. This is a very sensitive issue. Police officers, emergency response professionals, and the general public would prefer more light as opposed to less. The popular opinion is that more lighting equals less crime and, while more light will certainly help the police in identifying perpetrators, it doesn’t necessarily create safe environments. There are very well-lit alleys in which all sorts of crimes happen. The statistics have too many variables to pin down an unquestionable correlation. Maybe we should concentrate on good quality lighting that serves these purposes without increasing light levels. Better lighting, not more!

All of these applications are only marginally effective, which supports the position that we simply do not need as much lighting as we have. If a total of three people drive by a building at 3:00 a.m. and see it lit up, is keeping it illuminated all night long worth the collective fifteen seconds of viewing?

Every developer, architect, or designer should question if it’s really worth it. But then, it’s a hard question to ask – who’s to say what qualifies and what doesn’t? Who will speak up and tell someone “no”?

Photo Credits: Liber (1), Ian Plumb (2), Clav (3)