San Franciscans may be energy conscious, but the city’s residents to work harder to meet 2012 emissions goals, according to the city’s Department of Environment.
To help, the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee approved two grants Wednesday to launch a new city energy program targeting residential buildings. The grants await full board approval, but it’s unlikely that the supes will reject the cash.
The money will initially go to study how to efficiently retrofit and reduce or eliminate energy reliance in our strange San Francisco homes, such as split-up Victorians and apartments built before 1950. Existing city efficiency programs focus on commercial buildings.
There’s a growing body of data on home energy efficiency, but that fails in San Francisco’s case because researchers mostly consider single-family homes and new construction. Furthermore, much of that information is modeling and theory.
Our city bucks national home trends by having lots of old, small, multi-family residences, according to Cal Broomhead, manager of energy efficiency for San Francisco. He said that the city has almost 38,000 of these moderately sized multi-family buildings.
Retrofitting these buildings can take finesse, and established energy models apply poorly to these kinds of homes.
“You end up getting some very screwy results,” Broomhead said about using them.
“How do you deal with extremely leaky and very beautiful Victorian windows?” asked Matt Golden rhetorically. Golden is an efficiency expert and founder of ReCurve, a home energy auditing company. He agreed that San Francisco homes don’t fit many of the efficiency models because they are old and have associated problems, such as draftiness, moisture issues, obstructed access, limited or no attic, and old boilers and furnaces.
Reducing the need for external energy in multi-family units is specifically problematic, according to Golden. These homes lack the extra space to install enough renewable energy to cancel out multi-tenant demand. Furthermore, landlords – who often never see the utility bills – have little incentive to invest in changes.
Golden said that his company would benefit most from in-the-field studies both before and after retrofits, as opposed to theoretical research.
The Budget and Finance Committee has sent two grants to the full board for consideration: $250,000 from the Sidney E. Frank Foundation and $175,000 from the Living Cities Initiative. The money will launch the Zero Energy Homes Program, which is estimated to cost about $513,000 in its first year. The city will look for more money from stimulus funds.
Broomhead said the city would use its data analysis to develop “typical zero energy paths” and publish them on the web. These could include a “protocol on what to do with that kitchen remodel,” he suggested.
Guidelines will also help define residential rules and contractor training, both of which will go hand-in-hand with the city’s proposed Sustainable Financing Program.
The city hopes to integrate the program data with other web-based information, such as perhaps its nifty solar calculator, which shows the capacity of San Francisco rooftops by address.