Engineering Influence from ACEC

ACEC Research Institute Roundtable: Building Density in a Post-Pandemic World

 
On Thursday, January 14th, the ACEC Research Institute held a roundtable in its Future of Engineering series focused on building density in a post-pandemic world.  Information on future roundtables can be found on the ACEC Research Institute website.
The pandemic has forced us to change the way we live and work. Most office buildings, although designed with open floor plans, have far lower current occupancy rates than pre-pandemic due to employees working remotely and adhering to social distancing guidelines. In addition, traditionally densely occupied buildings, such as urban high rises in the central business district (CBD), healthcare and education, are having exceptional difficulties conducting business as usual. Will this decade become the decade of suburbia? How will existing buildings be retrofitted and new buildings be designed and constructed in the future? Will new occupant density requirements change the economics of real estate investment? This roundtable will address the following areas:
How will building designs change in the future, particularly for traditionally densely occupied buildings such as urban high rises in the CBD, healthcare and education?
What are the critical design changes needed to ensure occupant safety in the future?
How do design considerations differ for urban vs. suburban buildings relative to occupant safety?
What is the right balance between high-efficiency and health considerations in buildings? What will employees expect and demand?
Will there be greater use of outdoor spaces in the future? What are creative ways to accomplish this in building design?
Panelists:
Sabrina Kanner, EVP, Development, Design and Construction, Brookfield Properties.Colin Rohlfing, Director of Sustainable Development, HDR.Kate Wittels, Partner, HR&A Advisorys, Inc.Moderator: Joseph Bates, ACEC Research Institute.

Who's Who in the 117th Congress. The Government Affairs Update for January 15, 2021

Members of ACEC's advocacy team - Steve Hall, Katharine Mottley and Matt Reiffer - stopped by the podcast to discuss the changing face of Congress in 2021.  Learn who will lead the committees that matter to the engineering industry in this week's government affairs update. 
 

A Look at the Renewable Energy Sector with Deloitte's Marlene Motkya

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Marlene Motyka, who is the U.S. and Global Renewable Energy Leader at Deloitte, joined us on the Engineering Influence podcast to discuss her firm's recently released  2021 Renewable Energy Outlook report. Motyka authored the report, which highlights several trends that point towards huge growth in the sector.
Click here to download Deloitte's 2021 Renewable Energy Outlook report.
Click here to download Deloitte's Utility Decarbonization Strategies study.
 
Host:
Welcome to the Engineering Influence podcast, brought to you by the American Council of Engineering Companies.
The rapid expansion of renewable energy generation will be a pivotal factor in slowing climate change. Over the past few decades, solar and wind energy technologies and production have made tremendous advances, but we may be on the cusp of truly dynamic change.
Deloitte recently released its 2021 Renewable Energy Outlook, which highlights several trends that point towards huge growth in the renewable energy sector. The author of that report, Marlene Motyka, who is the U.S. and Global Renewable Energy Leader at Deloitte, has joined us on the program to discuss the current state and future prospects for renewable energy.
So let's get into it.
There have been reports in recent months that solar and or wind generation have achieved cost parity with carbon-based generation. Is this true? And if so, what is the impact?
Motyka:
The answer to your first question is yes. Over the past decade as the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) has decreased over 70% for wind and 90% for utility-scale solar, these renewables have achieved cost parity with carbon-based generation across most of the world. And they've done so while also increasing technology efficiency and capacity factors. And these deep price declines and technology improvements are continuing. Really the impact is hard to overstate. Today it means that new wind and solar are more cost-effective to build than new fossil fuel plants and the LCOE ranges for solar photovoltaic or PV and onshore wind are below that of natural gas and below the cost of running many coal plants. And new-build renewables are also increasingly becoming competitive with the cost of running existing natural gas and nuclear plants and are on track to undercut them in the next few years.
Motyka:
So as a result, we think the energy transition is on the cusp of really rapid acceleration, even in states without renewable portfolio standards, because of the low cost resulting from market fundamentals and tax incentives. So we hear a lot about decarbonization and really what we're saying is it's affordable. And despite the pandemic and federal policy headwinds in 2020, renewable deployment was surging. U.S. PV capacity deployments hit record highs in 2020, and are expected to do the same in 2021. And onshore wind in 2020 also recorded the largest capacity additions since 2012, while offshore is really poised to take off in the coming years.
Host:
So to your point, that federal policy can have a big impact on the renewable energy market. In the year-end spending bill, Congress extended the tax credits for solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies. How will that affect the market?
Motyka:
We got a year-end little treat here--we tend to sometimes have that with regard to these tax incentives for the renewable space--but really surpassing most industry expectations. The two-year extension of the 26% investment tax credit or ITC could provide a significant boost to the outlook for solar deployments as could the maintain 60% production tax credit for wind through the end of 2021 for onshore wind deployments. And the extensions may also provide the biggest boost to offshore wind starts, which are now eligible for a 30% ITC for projects that start construction before the end of 2025. So besides boosting solar and onshore and offshore wind deployments, these extensions could also ease concerns about missing deadlines due to pandemic related supply chain disruptions that happened in 2020 and also provide additional certainty for investments in domestic manufacturing and recycling as well as port facilities for the nascent offshore wind industry in the U.S. On top of that, the stimulus package had additional billions of dollars for funding for renewable R&D and grid modernization, and that could really help accelerate technology innovation and the deployment of hybrid platforms that include emerging renewables, such as marine power, as well as emerging storage technologies.
Host:
The Biden Administration has expressed its intention to support renewable energy. Is that going to have an impact over the next few years?
Motyka:
There's been a lot of buzz about this topic, and with the Democratic Senate and House control, the Biden Administration will have a window of opportunity to really usher in some ambitious clean energy legislation. They don't have a filibuster-proof majority, so the Administration may need to integrate its decarbonization and clean energy targets into a broader infrastructure stimulus package, but the Congressional Review Act and simple majorities will allow for reversals of many of the previous administration's regulatory rollbacks, executive decisions to streamline permitting and provide regulatory support for renewables, creation of a clean energy standard, establishment of a new Green Bank, and as most people may be aware, the U.S. rejoining the Paris Accord. In any case, I think the Biden Administration's commitment to decarbonization is going to really turbocharge the cost, customer, and sub-federal forces that have really been driving clean energy investment and deployment over the past four years.
Motyka:
I think another thing to point out is the Biden Administration's appointment of a Democratic chair for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) would also have a significant impact on the power sector's decarbonization by 2035. A shift in FERC could brighten the prospects for rulings supportive of clean energy resources, ability to clear energy markets, and states seeking greater deployment of renewables. It could also facilitate the buildout of transmission that really will be needed to integrate higher shares of renewables on the grid. And finally, FERC will be key to reshaping electricity markets to ensure resource adequacy, grid, reliability, and limited price volatility, amid the planned rapid increase of renewable penetration and the corresponding fossil fuel plant retirements
Host:
In your report, you highlight the increasing size of offshore wind turbines, up to about 14 megawatts. Can we expect to see ongoing technological advances in both solar and wind to make them even more cost-competitive?
Motyka:
Yes, I think we can. While solar and wind are already both mature technologies, we can expect to see ongoing technological advances that will make them even more cost-competitive. When we look at solar, bifacial solar recently achieved cost competitiveness with single-side solar modules and could soon overtake them. And there's also optimization of tilt angles and ground reflectants that are expected to further drive costs down.
Motyka:
Second, new materials that can absorb a broader range of solar spectrum could push efficiency past the upper bounds for silicon cells. And these include silicon cells layered with perovskite, which are nearing commercialization, and other cells using multiple non-silicon materials. In addition, there are innovative inverter technologies that are enabling more flexible grid, enhanced deployments of solar power.
Motyka:
Third, I'd like to point out California's new home solar requirements, which are driving innovation and partnership between solar developers, builders, and roofers to commercialize building-integrated PV that really hits the sweet spot between efficiency, affordability, and aesthetics.
Motyka:
And then on the wind side, you know, the wind industry really hasn't hit a point of diminishing returns yet on increased scale. And you mentioned 14-megawatt turbines, so with wind bigger really is better. And with larger turbines, you're able to really drive down manufacturing and maintenance costs, but at the same time increasing revenue, and there's been a lot of material innovation, which is continuing to enable these larger turbines. And then also we have floating wind technologies that are maturing and becoming increasingly competitive
Host:
And touching on floating wind technologies. What can we expect in that arena?
Motyka:
That's really exciting. So just briefly, floating offshore wind uses semi-submerged structures that are tethered to the seabed rather than fixed to it with foundations. And the advantage of floating offshore wind plants is that they can be deployed at depths beyond the 165-foot limit for fixed foundation offshore wind. Most offshore wind resources are actually located beyond this point, including much on the West Coast. The ability to deploy floating offshore wind opens much more generation capacity for the U.S. And also deployment and deeper waters further from the shoreline could also yield higher capacity factors. Another advantage of floating wind platforms is that they could host other technologies. Currently, developers are exploring enhanced structures that could lower costs via hybridization of floating platforms with complementary tidal wave and ocean thermal energy generation, as well as floating solar generation. So a lot of exciting things happening there.
Host:
Another area that sounds pretty exciting is hydrogen and power-to-x. In your report, you did a pretty deep dive into that. What does this bode for the future?
Motyka:
Yeah, there's been a lot of discussion about hybrid hydrogen. It's really kind of just popped up, I would say, in the last year in full force. Hydrogen and power-to-x technologies are going to play a significant role in closing the last 20% of the decarbonization gap, which we expect around the 2040 timeline. That's when heating and industrial sectors are really expected to transition away from natural gas, and the transportation sector to transition away from oil. So they're expected to increasingly refuel with electricity. For example, you'll see heat pumps replacing gas furnaces in buildings and advanced electrothermal technologies replacing gas in industrial processes. And in areas where electrification is least feasible, green hydrogen is one of the only solutions right now that can help decarbonization of all the remaining hard to abate sectors, from heavy industry to long-haul transportation.
Motyka:
Green hydrogen is also one of the few solutions to renewable integration challenges at high levels of penetration. So when we think about renewable penetration that's needed to cross that last 20% threshold, there's going to be integration challenges that are much greater for renewables. So significant overbuild and curtailment of renewables may occur without large-scale seasonal storage to capture excess renewable production, which can be used when renewable production drops off for long periods of time. And hydrogen could seasonally store renewables in liquid, gas, and chemical conform and convert that back to power when needed. There are really no commercially operational hydrogen power plants in the world yet, but utilities are looking to cost-effectively start retrofitting some gas plants to partially or fully run on hydrogen. Also, islanded green hydrogen can support an energy system as greater economy-wide electrification strains grid capacity.
Motyka:
So we talked about offshore wind and as deployment increasingly moves offshore and into deeper water, hydrogen pipelines could supplement high voltage transmission to bring the energy onshore and might really be the most cost-effective energy carrier in areas where there is high grid congestion, such as along some of the East coast. And just last weekend, the European Commission granted a consortium, which is being led by Orsted, 5 million euros to help develop desalinization and electrolysis systems for an offshore wind deployment to produce green hydrogen. So that's really exciting. And I think there's a lot of interesting things to come with hydrogen and with renewables supporting green hydrogen.
Host:
One of the challenges has been that solar only works when the sun shining and as such a lot of focus has been on storage. It has been considered to be the missing link for the expansion of renewable energy. Where are we with storage right now?
Motyka:
Yeah, I think there's been a lot of evolution, but there's more to come here. And the surge of renewables on the grid required to reach the decarbonization goals that we're seeing being set will require energy storage. And that will allow for system flexibility. But the capacity of storage is going to need to grow exponentially from where it currently is to support the record levels of renewable deployment we expect.
Motyka:
And when we look at current energy storage deployment, there are dominated by two technologies. The first is electrochemical lithium-ion battery technology and mechanical Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS). And these two technologies in some ways are kind of at the opposite ends of the spectrum when you look at energy storage options. So on the one hand, you have dynamic lithium-ion battery technology, which can competitively provide four-hour storage almost anywhere and is experiencing rapidly falling cost, increasing density, and other material and chemical advances, so that's great. But, meanwhile Pumped Hydro Storage is a long-standing, but geographically constrained, technology with higher stable costs that's recently seen an uptick in deployment as it can provide longer duration storage. And sub-sea PHS is a new frontier that some offshore wind developers are starting to explore.
Motyka:
But in between these two types of energy storage technologies are a host of evolving mechanical and battery storage technologies offering hourly, intra-day, inter-day, and even weekly storage. This will help support the grid in many different ways, but I think a key is that we have to see the opening of additional revenue streams to support the use cases of energy storage. So energy storage can be responsible for primary response. It can be used for energy arbitrage, peaker replacement, secondary response, and even support distribution and transmission deferral, but to really help accelerate the deployment of these storage technologies, we need the markets to compensate these technologies for the value that they're adding to the grid,
Host:
On that, how does that happen? How do you expect the market to compensate?
Motyka:
Well, the FERC is going to be key to that. They've set out some guidelines that talk to us about the Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) needing to create structures and pricing signals that will allow battery storage and other types of distributed energy resources to be compensated for the services they add. And it will take time for this to unroll, but we expect this to continue to evolve. And as I mentioned earlier with the fact that the Biden Administration can put a Democrat in place to lead FERC, we think that will continue to support the rollout of these technologies
Host:
Looking farther into the future, in 2019 renewables accounted for about 17.6% of U.S. power generation. Where do you see that number going over the coming years?
Motyka:
I think there's interesting times to come here. When we look at this combination of plummeting cost, technology innovation, government, and utility targets, corporate and citizen demand for renewables, the ITC and PTC extensions that I mentioned earlier, and the new administration, we're really going to see unprecedented, renewable investment and growth, because everybody's going to be moving towards this common goal to fully decarbonize the economy by 2050, and the targets that are going to be required to meet those goals are going to result in record annual deployments of wind and solar because that's really going to be the bulk of U.S generation that's going to be built by mid-century.
Motyka:
Deloitte recently issued a report on utility decarbonization. And we said in that study without other decarbonization solutions, these renewables would need to be able to meet three to eight-times peak demand to ensure adequate generation when the sun and wind resources availability is at its lowest, even with storage in the mix, and total capacity additions may need to surpass total existing generation capacity to make up for the coal share that needs to be replaced as well as planned and retiring natural gas.
Motyka:
And I do want to point out that over 280 companies across the globe have pledged to have 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources no later than 2050. So all of this is coming together and I think to sum it up, I see very large growth in renewables in the coming years and in the longer term as well.
Host:
And finally, funding is moving into renewable energy with funding coming from large oil and gas producers. Does this mark a turning point for the renewable energy market?
Motyka:
You pointed out oil and gas companies and we see them being poised to leverage their deep expertise in offshore environments and bring that to the U.S. Offshore wind industry, which is really just starting to evolve and grow. This could provide them relatively stable revenues, but also lower their carbon footprints. And we think also oil companies could be well-positioned to hybridize offshore wind projects with green hydrogen production. And this could be a new industry area for the oil industry to leverage their existing expertise. But with the broad goals from the Biden Administration related to clean technology and decarbonization of the economy, I think there's an expectation that investment in the renewable sector will increase and attract new players across the globe with a variety of different backgrounds and coming from different industry sectors. So I think no doubt, there's going to be some really interesting times ahead, and this is going to be a very interesting industry sector.
Host:
You sound pretty optimistic about it. I would say
Motyka:
I do. I'm very excited.
Host:
That's great and that's a great place to stop. I appreciate your taking the time to speak with us.
Motyka:
Thank you very much. I appreciate the time.
 

A Closer Look at the First Ever Engineering Industry Profile

Joe Bates with the ACEC Research Institute and Jon Gray, Principal at Rockport Analytics joined the podcast to discuss the ACEC Research Institute's newly released industry profile of the Engineering and Architectural Services sector.
The first of its kind report demonstrates the significant contribution these sectors make to overall employment (3% of all US jobs), tax revenue ($44.7 billion) and direct economic impact ($229 billion).  Download your copy of the report today. 
 

The Omnibus, PPP and a Senate Flip: The ACEC Government Affairs Update for January 8th 2021

ACEC's Government Affairs team joined Engineering Influence for the first Government Affairs Update for 2021.
Make sure to like and subscribe to Engineering Influence so you never miss a weekly update from our GA team.

Discussing Embodied Carbon Solutions with Walter P Moore's Dirk Kestner

Dirk Kestner, who is Director of Sustainable Design and a principal at Walter P Moore, came on the program to discuss his firm's recent report Embodied Carbon: A Clearer View of Carbon Emissions and to talk about how the A/E/C community can account for embodied carbon in their design and construction decisions.
Click here to view the report.
Host:
Welcome to the Engineering Influence podcast sponsored by the ACEC Life/Health Trust. Today, we are talking with Dirk Kestner who is Director of Sustainable Design and a principal at Walter P Moore. The firm recently released a comprehensive report titled Embodied Carbon: A Clearer View of Carbon Emissions. Embodied carbon emissions occur before a building opens as opposed to operational emissions that happen over a building's lifespan. They include carbon emissions associated with extracting, processing, shipping, installing, and maintaining the materials used in the building. The UN Environment Global Status Report predicts that during the next 40 years, we will build 2.5 trillion square feet of new building stock, which is equivalent to replicating New York City every month for 40 years. To reach the greenhouse gas targets set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we must significantly reduce the embodied carbon of buildings constructed during the next 10 years and reach net-zero embodied and operational carbon soon after. The report outlines how complex getting to net-zero carbon will be, requiring a multi-pronged approach: a combination of design optimization, enabling dematerialization, decarbonization of the electrical grid, material impact optimization, and the inclusion of carbon sequestering structural solutions. So let's dive into it.
Host:
In your report, you write, "We must transition our design thinking from a linear approach where the end goal is the building to a circular approach where buildings are thought of as material banks for the future. The simplest way to reduce embodied carbon is to use less--either at the building scale or the materials scale. You add, though, that current design practice is to optimize based largely, if not exclusively, on the cost and time of construction. How do we change that mindset?
Kestner:
Well, thank you. Time and cost, in terms of dollars, will always matter and be very important. But what we're increasingly aware of is that are there these externalities that we need to capture and roll into this. We've seen some of that in the use of third-party rating systems, such as LEED or Envision or Living Building, where these elements that aren't classically captured--the environmental impacts that occur--are baked into the point structure or the part of the rating system, or even in the case of the Living Building rating system, where you actually do quantify your embodied carbon and then have to offset it through a series of pre-vetted offsets and pay a dollar amount to offset it. But we're also seeing some companies that are internally carrying a price for embodied carbon, that are asking for a team to look at the operational and embodied carbon, and then as they make their decision making processes, they're weighing that. And there are a few jurisdictions, and I think increasingly we'll see more that will carry a cost as well. Some of this mindset shift also relates to how we make some of these decisions that we've historically done, where we do think about economy in one way. Something as simple as concrete and formwork, where the labor costs of making different forms may have added more dollar costs historically, but now we could price the difference in terms of carbon of that added material and see how that changes the equation.
Host:
You address, the incredible complexity of identifying and quantifying embedded carbon in the building process. You write, "We are tackling a diabolical problem in a compressed timeframe. As with many engineering tasks, quantifying embodied carbon involves working with uncertain data. And in the case of embodied carbon uncertainty in these measurements stems from a variety of sources: material volume assumptions, using industry averages and different methodologies for developing impact factors, to name a few." How accurate can you be today? How accurate do you need to be? And looking forward, how accurate do you expect to be?
Kestner:
Right now? It's very hard to say that an estimate of embodied carbon in terms of kilograms of CO2 is within a certain percentage of "true embodied carbon." However, there are two things that are very important that we can do and where the imperfect assessments are very helpful right now. They can be directional and they will show us where the hotspots in our structures or buildings or infrastructure are. So with these current assessments and we can use comparative analysis and run different data sets through to bound it and come up with ranges, we're able to know enough to be able to take action and to ask questions about how we could optimize. Now in the future, we'll have to be far more accurate and we can prime the pump for that today by working with the ISO standards for life cycle assessment and the product category rules, the environmental product declarations, making sure that suppliers know that we will be asking for this and that we're working to enhance the framework for data consistency and transparency so that we will be able to make better comparisons in the future.
Host:
On that point there, what role does the engineer in a design team working with an owner have in setting standards for suppliers?
Kestner:
I guess it depends on how the engineer views their role at some level, the engineer as a specifier. Every engineer will not. But because we understand the importance of making these comparisons, we need to be part of shaping that ecosystem, if you will, of data collection and how to act on the data. But I could see that being debated with an engineer saying, "What's in my scope or what's not."
Host:
You highlight the strategy of dealing with the biggest embedded emitters first, and the biggest is concrete. You write that "Manufacturing concrete is an extremely carbon-intensive process that accounts for 4.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, or 8% of the world's total global carbon emissions each year, making it the world's second-largest CO2 emitter. The first step to reducing the carbon impact of concrete that should be done on every project, every time is to optimize Portland Cement usage." Another big opportunity though is reducing the amount of cement in concrete. You highlight some current cement alternatives, such as fly ash. Looking into the future, what advances do you expect in this area?
Kestner:
The area where we see the most advancement is in that binder--the glue that holds the rock together in concrete. And we're seeing some very interesting research right now at the university and academic level related to organic processes that can lead to compounds that can hold the rock together and perhaps even sequester CO2 in the process. While we see that in the long term and in the future, there's a number of steps that should be taken today as far as concrete, as far as optimization, that we don't need to wait for. And some of this relates back to some really basic steps, such as making sure that we are using performance specifications appropriately, minimizing the use of prescriptive specifications, having environmental performance specific specifications for concrete, as well as making sure that we're having deep dialogues with all members of the construction team, including the ready-mix supplier, about what is driving the cement content of the concrete today--whether it's a requirement that's put on by the specifying engineer, one related to achieving construction or pumping or something like that, or something related to the local aggregate that's available. There's also a lot of innovation going on within the manufacture of cement, such, uh, Portland limestone cements, or other cements that are still cement, but are less carbon-intensive.
Host:
Steel is another primary construction material. And it has a different problem because much of the carbon emissions are due to its high reliance on electricity to transform the raw material into its structural form. You say that we can expect some relief due to the projected increase in renewable resources in our electrical generation, from 18% in 2018 to 31% of generation by 2050. Are there other near-term ways to reduce the impact of the electrical grid on the embedded carbon in our building?
Kestner:
Yes, there's a great opportunity for materials that consume a lot of electricity in their manufacture. And that is that we know how to make renewable energy, and it can be a matter of incentivizing and understanding how suppliers who have these electrical intensive materials can drive the market to supply more renewable energy. One of the best ways that a specifier could do that is to ask for embodied carbon information in the form of an EPD from suppliers of these materials. If, then, it's the case that a large portion of their impact is tied to the electricity that goes into their product, that gives them a very straightforward, though not necessarily easy, way to reduce the embodied carbon of that material. So as specifiers, we don't have to wait for the grid to decarbonize over time; we can play a part in creating an incentive for that.
Host:
You dedicate quite a bit of space in the report to reuse. Obviously reusing a building, rather than building a new one, will substantially reduce the embodied carbon--as well as offer opportunities to improve the operational carbon performance of that building. But you also point to reusing materials that have already been made. For example, you report that construction and demolition waste represents approximately 40% of everything thrown away in the U.S. each year, and that most of that material could have been recycled or reused, but many regions don't have the infrastructure--and I might add the incentive--to effectively reuse. How do we get there?
Kestner:
Some of this comes back to where we started our conversation, with the externalities, and making sure we carry the cost of that material that would go into the landfill and is not reused to show teams and show owners that there can be latent value in those materials. In some ways, as we start to design buildings for deconstruction, and we think about an existing building not just as a building, but as a material bank or something where there is a carried value, that will help. And we can help as we document buildings to show how they are able to be deconstructed and to let the owner understand that there's value there. But the other part is making sure that we have an infrastructure and a supply chain to make those connections for that material that right now goes into the landfill. To show that once you're able to understand what's there, to understand where it might go, that there's a pathway, and that someone who's looking for this material can use it.
Kestner:
So that creates value in that material. But sometimes it's as simple as having a warehouse or having a space for that material to sit, just because it can take time from when it comes out of the building to when it would go into the next one. A great example of that, that's highlighted in the report, is our involvement in the Life Cycle Building Center in Atlanta, a nonprofit, but where a group of designers came together based on occurrences and shortcomings of future projects and identifying that need in past projects to be able to have a space and make those connections from a material that was coming out of one building and could go into the next.
Host:
Materials that can store carbon dioxide will be a key to offsetting the emissions from the other materials in buildings. Timber is the most obvious structural material that can sequester carbon dioxide. Although you make the essential point in the report that we must consider not only the carbon sequestration of the wood, but also the impacts that come from harvesting, milling, and shipping this product, given the importance of carbon sequestrating materials for achieving net-zero, do we start using more wood construction? And are there other sequestrating materials available now, or that you expect to come available in the future?
Kestner:
I do believe that with the advent of technologies like cross-laminated timber, we will continue to see timber construction in ways and locations that we historically had not. But it's also very important to remember, as you correctly mentioned, that even for timber construction, there's a number of steps along the supply chain where we are emitting CO2. So the act of measuring the total CO2 for the project, and then looking at what's causing the CO2 emissions, even in that timber building, and how we can make those reductions is very, very important. When we look at some of the mass timber buildings that we're currently designing, every floor has 2-1/2 to 3 inches of concrete on it. So it's important as we are using the timber to store CO2, that we're also thinking about the emissions from those other materials. There's some very interesting research going on on other living and sequestering materials at the Living Materials Laboratory at CU Boulder, with Wil Srubar. They're looking not only at things like cellulose=based composites, but biopolymers and biogenic cements, so that we could have sequestration, not only in timber, but in all those other materials that we use in construction.
Host:
Finally, at the beginning of your report, you referenced the World Green Building Council's report, which is called Bringing Embodied Carbon Upfront, in which, and I'm quoting here, "They embraced a bold vision that by 2050 new buildings, infrastructure and renovations will have zero-net embodied carbon, and all buildings, including existing buildings, must be net-zero operational carbon. How optimistic are you about achieving that?
Kestner:
I'm optimistic. It's a bold vision, and it may seem quite aggressive right now, but I'm also always amazed at what we can accomplish when we get a bunch of smart engineers together, working on an identified problem. It really has only been the past couple of years, perhaps two years, that we've seen broad awareness of embodied carbon in the A/E/C space. And we're seeing a number of different technologies that are emerging to address this. And we're also seeing teams go back, and by studying and measuring embodied carbon and having this as a metric that we're looking at, challenge past assumptions. So I'm optimistic, and I think it will be a combination of both rethinking some very classic things we do, as well as some new technologies that will be developed.
Host:
Great. That's a happy way to end. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us today.
Kestner:
Thank you for the opportunity.
 

A Conversation with Barge Design Solutions, the 2020 Grand Conceptor Recipient

Engineering Influence welcomed Carrie Stokes, Senior VP and Director of Site Solutions and Tom McComb, Senior Geologist and Senior Project Manager from Barge Design Solutions to the show to talk about their work on the 2020 EEA Grand Conceptor, the Cooperhill Watershed Restoration Project.
The Copperhill Watershed Restoration Project in Ducktown, Tenn. won the year’s 2020 “Grand Conceptor” Award at the Engineering Excellence Awards Gala earlier this month, signifying the year’s most outstanding engineering achievement.
A video about the project can be found here.
Designed by Barge Design Solutions in Nashville, the 20-year restoration project transformed a 50-square-mile site, severely damaged from more than a century of logging, mining and acid production, into a lush, clean and natural wonderland where residents now enjoy fishing, swimming and hiking.
Restoration efforts included disposal of mining waste, construction of clean-water diversions, re-establishment of natural, healthy communities of aquatic insects; and construction of new contaminant-filtering wetlands.
Before the restoration, the contaminated site was one of only two manmade features astronauts could see from space, along with the Great Wall of China.
 
Related links: 
www.bargedesign.com
https://ducktownbasinmuseum.com 
https://www.acec.org/awards-programs/engineering-excellence-awards/ 
 

Engineering and Nature with the Engineering Change Lab

The podcast welcomed back Mike McMeekin with the Engineering Change Lab to discuss the intersection of engineering and the environment with guest Jennifer Molnar, Lead Scientist & Managing Director, Center for Sustainability Science, The Nature Conservancy.
Engineering Change Lab - USA (ECL-USA) is a new non-profit that is focused on the future of engineering. ECL-USA’s mission is to be a catalyst for change within the engineering community, helping it contribute at the highest possible level in addressing the challenges of the 21st Century.
ECL-USA has now held nine summits over the last three years. Each summit is a deep dive into an issue that will impact the future of engineering. The summits include a combination of learning from thought leaders, or provocateurs, along with small group and large group exercises and discussion.
The concept of Environmentally Responsible Engineering has been a topic at two recent summits. ECL-USA’s recent virtual summit explored what it takes to lead the work of environmentally responsible engineering through the stories of leaders actively engaged in this type of work.
One of the provocateurs for this session was Jen Molnar, Lead Scientist & Managing Director, Center for Sustainability Science, The Nature Conservancy. Jen Molnar’s work at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) revolves around her desire to combine her environmental engineering background with a deeper involvement with nature to address environmental challenges.