By Jay Fox

Last week’s Appalachian Energy Summit took place on the campus of Appalachian State University in Boone. According to Mike Kapp, the unofficial emcee of the event and App State Director of Sustainability & Energy Management, the summit drew more than 200 attendees to the bucolic college town in the North Carolina highlands to explore novel ideas in efficiency, sustainability, and resource management. The annual conference has been held since 2012 and brings together energy managers; government and industry leaders; and faculty, staff, and students from colleges and universities across the University of North Carolina System and beyond.

As Kapp said during the June 4 opening plenary, there was “a hard lean towards building science” at this year’s conference. To emphasize the role that building science plays in supporting energy efficiency, the keynote speaker was Joe Lstiburek, one of North America’s preeminent building scientists. However, prior to the opening reception and Lstiburek’s combination of wisdom and wit during his remarks Wednesday night, the opening plenary introduced another theme that would color much of the three-day conference: resiliency.

UNC Asheville Director of Sustainability Casey King elaborated on the subject following Kapp’s opening remarks. She noted that resiliency becomes more important as the oceans warm because warmer oceans tend to produce more intense storms. While this warning has been sounded before, King’s statement was made with Hurricane Helene still prominently on the minds of many in attendance.

Both the human toll and the costs associated with rebuilding following future disasters can be mitigated by investing in better and more resilient infrastructure and buildings, according to King.

Successes at UNC

As other presenters throughout the conference explored in far greater detail than can be covered here, resiliency is necessarily proactive. It requires reinforcing grid infrastructure, creating a diverse array of renewable energy sources, electrifying buildings, and making improvements in building efficiency.

What may come as a surprise is that these are not merely aspirational goals for the UNC System. Since the 2002-2003 academic year, campuses have been working to drive down energy use and, as a result, the system has avoided $2.37 billion in energy costs.

While this figure may sound fantastical, it becomes far more realistic when one contextualizes the size of the UNC System. It is currently the ninth largest university system in the United States, with an enrollment of more than 248,000 students (see Table 1) across seventeen campuses. The UNC System also employs 48,000 people, bringing the total number of those who are directly associated with it to just under 300,000—larger than the population of Toledo, Buffalo, or St. Louis.

(Given that these municipalities have large property portfolios, aging assets and infrastructure, and astronomical operating costs, they may want to consider using the UNC playbook by investing in renewable energy and building efficacy.)

As those in attendance learned, students have initiated some sustainability efforts, too. At App State, which is a master’s university within the UNC System with an enrollment of over 20,000, students have contributed $5 per semester tax to fund renewable energy and energy efficiency projects on campus for 20 years. The funding is allocated through the student-led Appalachian State University Renewable Energy Initiative (ASUREI). ASUREI Executive Chair Ransom Cope (class of 2026) explained that the tax was temporarily approved for the 2004-2005 school year through a student referendum, but that it was made permanent in 2007 following a vote with 92% of students in favor. Since that time, ASUREI has funded more than 40 renewable energy and energy efficiency projects with funds allocated through the tax. 

App State has also regularly performed well at the United States Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon Design Challenge, which has recently been rebranded as the BuildingsNEXT Student Design competition. This year, the App State team received an honorable mention in multiple categories (note: no team was named a “winner” in any category this year), and they even spoke about their project during the summit’s closing ceremony.

Despite these successes, the UNC System still spends about $1 million each day ($40,753 per hour) just on power when classes are in session, according to Program Analyst II Sheila Blanchard of the North Carolina State Energy Office. Blanchard, who spoke during the conference’s closing plenary, applauded the progress illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, but noted that there’s still more to do with respect to the system and the state as a whole.

Better Building Science

As much as resiliency and the UNC System’s embrace of efficiency were central to the summit, they were often explored through the lens of better building science. While there is widespread appreciation of the results of better building science, it is rare to see the figurative sausage being made, and many would doubt that it is possible to be entertained while doing so. Wednesday night’s keynote speaker, Joe Lstiburek, challenges that assumption.

Lstiburek has had a lasting influence on the world of building science since donning the Iron Ring many decades ago, but his underlying message is refreshingly straightforward. “Don’t do stupid things,” he said bluntly.

As clarification, he offered four additional commandments to anyone involved in the design and construction of buildings:

1.       Don’t kill anyone.

2.       Don’t make them sick.

3.       Don’t kill the building.

4.       Don’t make the building sick.

In addition to these pearls of wisdom, Lstiburek described some of the complications associated with improving existing building. He noted that while continuous insulation layers can be beneficial for retrofits (so long as they don’t destroy important historical elements), rainscreen assemblies have the potential to be extremely problematic when they include ventilation spaces that are greater than half an inch. Lstiburek held up Grenfell Tower in London as one tragic example but added that several other high-rises around the world had suffered equally catastrophic failures. As he explained, when the ventilation space is greater than half an inch, it acts like an expressway for fire, allowing it to climb up the façade of the building. Reducing the space to less than half an inch and including fire stopping materials (like mineral wool) prevents the spread of fire.

RDH Senior Building Science Specialist Michael Kramer also spoke about building science best practices and detailed a few case studies (including the Bunker Hill Housing Redevelopment project). During his Thursday presentation, Kramer said that the most primitive buildings were designed “to keep the rain off your head and the bears out,” typically with just one layer controlling everything. As building enclosures have become more sophisticated, there has been a delineation in the composition of enclosures. Optimizing performance now means building an enclosure with multiple layers (e.g., vapor barrier, insulation, air barrier) with separate control functions capable of addressing:

• Water penetration

• Condensation

• Air flow (e.g., heat, moisture, contaminants/smoke)

• Vapor diffusion (wetting & drying)

• Heat flow

• Light and solar radiation

• Noise

• Fire (e.g., wildfire heat & embers)

While at the same time:

• Transferring structural loads

• Being durable and maintainable

• Being mindful of materials choices (due to embodied carbon, VOCs, other pollutants)

• Being economical & constructable

• Looking good

It’s not an easy task!

Kramer did not solely focus on the evolution of building enclosures during his presentation. He also discussed how prefabricated enclosure systems seem likely to become more common because they can provide all these elements of a high-performance enclosure while reducing construction time and costs and improving QA/QC. Additionally, Kramer also noted that sustainable building materials like mass timber have the potential to become more common due to a combination of new codes and guidelines limiting embodied carbon, as well as growing consumer preference for more natural materials.