The Resource Efficient Electrification (REE) method of building decarbonization incorporates strategic capital planning, an integrated design process, and an incremental, network-oriented approach to deliver building heating, cooling, and ventilation which:
- requires limited or no combustion,
- enables carbon neutrality,
- is highly efficient at low design temperatures and during extreme weather,
- is highly resilient, demand conscious, and energy grid-interactive,
- reduces thermal waste by capturing as many on-site or nearby thermal flows as possible, and
- incorporates realistic and flexible implementation strategies by optimizing and scheduling low carbon retrofits phase-in.
The figure below illustrates a conceptual framework for accomplishing these objectives and overcoming the mental traps described in a previous page. Specific measures and sequencing will be highly bespoke for a given building, but engineers and their owner clients can use this bucketed “RRRR/R” framework to place actionable projects in context of an overarching decarbonization roadmap:
Reduce
Recover
- Store heat where necessary.
- Eliminate "economizer" waste. Rejecting heat is wasting energy.
- Identify simultaneous or correlated heating & cooling opportunities within daily load profiles to create a thermal network
- include other creative and opportunistic heat sources such as steam condensate return, ventilation exhaust, or data centers
Replace
Fossil combustion equipment with the appropriate heat pump technology(ies), to the degree techno-economically feasible, with emphasis on efficiently meeting the bulk of the building’s annual load.
Not just 1:1 swap! REDUCE & RECOVER first, then size heat pumps to top-off the remaining heat/cool imbalance on a thermal network.
- Peak condition challenges don’t have to prevent partial electrification and electrification enabling decisions today
- Give separate consideration to challenging loads, extreme conditions
- Retaining resilience & optionality in the transition