Investing in energy efficiency

By Emma Peterson.

Learn how an $18.1M grant is powering Hawaiʻi’s push for energy efficiency.

Building a more environmentally friendly future is not only crucial to mitigating the future effects of climate change, but it also provides economic and health benefits for people right now. A huge part of doing this is building a more efficient and resilient energy grid. Recently, Hawaiʻi’s State Energy Office received an $18.1million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help them implement a building energy performance standard aimed at energy-efficiency. Lauren White, the editor at The Coffee Shops™, got the chance to sit down with Howard Wiig and Ron Chatterjee of the Hawaiʻi State Energy Office to talk about the grant and where the money will be going.

Ron, who is an energy efficiency specialist, explained the core of what this grant does, saying, “It's to develop energy targets for older existing commercial buildings that were constructed before building energy codes were introduced. It's not directed at residential at all, although some very large multifamily buildings are going to be part of this at a much later date. But it's office buildings, hospitals, shops and resorts, who are the main energy users on the islands.” The majority of the money will be used to create a workforce development program to support the goals of this program. The skilled trades workers who come out of the program will then be able to work in the field, retrofitting and rebuilding according to the increased energy efficiency standards.

Because the training is being done with the goal of having skilled workers who can make buildings in their communities more energy efficient, there is a lot of code training involved. Howard has a lot of experience with energy codes, having watched the first energy codes emerge in the 1980s. He shared a bit of the history, saying, “In the 1990s came the upwelling of energy codes for residential buildings. And a residence is defined as a building that is three stories or less in height and is intended for the habituation of occupants. If you have a three-story building, and the top two are for residents, and the bottom is for retail, then that's called a mixed-use building.”  

A great example of the type of installation practices and products that these codes deal with are cool roofs. The Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC) describes a cool roof as, “One that strongly reflects sunlight (solar energy) and also cools itself by efficiently emitting any heat that was absorbed. The roof literally stays cooler and reduces the amount of heat conducted into the building below.” The use of cool roofs is an especially powerful method in the unique climate of Hawaiʻi. Ron explained, “We have absolutely no heating load. We have a lot of cooling load. If you look at the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), who do all the heating and cooling calculations, even Miami has a certain amount of heating load that they anticipate. We are the only place that does not. And so, insulation being a lot more expensive here than on the mainland, the reflective coatings on walls and roofs are the economical way forward because it does the same amount of heat mitigation as insulation would.”

So, when the Hawaiʻi’s State Energy Office started developing the codes for energy efficiency, they kept this in mind. Howard explained, “When the 2015 energy code came along on the mainland and said that existing residences needed to install the same amount of insulation as a new construction if they were going to reroof, the Roofing Contractors Association of Hawaiʻi came to me and said, ‘Howard, this is going to double the cost of our reroofing.’ And that's when we sat down and came up with this solution, using California's Title 24, which requires a higher reflectivity and emissivity rating, in our code.”

The result of establishing and continuing to develop codes like this can be seen through typical single-family residence energy consumption. Howard explained, “When I first started in the business, the typical kilowatt-hour bill for your typical single-family residence was about 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month. Now, even with every electricity consuming device known to man, our average single-family residential bill is now 600 KWH a month.” Now, eight years later and with the grant supporting them, Ron, Howard and their coworkers are still improving and developing their code and workforce to create more energy efficiency in Hawaiʻi.  

Original photo source: Hawaiʻi’s State Energy Office