Earth Advantage Wins Multiple Grants

The Portland-based non-profit Earth Advantage continues a string of successful 2016 achievements. In addition to finalizing the sale of its CakeSystems software to Renovate America, Earth Advantage has been awarded three grants focused on optimizing building energy performance data and carbon reduction strategies. Each of the successful grants were a collaboration between Earth Advantage and key governmental, private sector, and non-profit, partners.
 
Earth Advantage is working to influence how new homes and apartments are built in the Northwest, with a goal that by 2030 50% are built to zero energy performance standards and 50% are built as zero energy ready*. In order to achieve this goal in the short 13 years remaining, Earth Advantage is working on practical solutions that address technical, policy, and market obstacles. With this work, Earth Advantage is helping Northwest states and cities meet their critical climate change responsibilities and improving community resiliency.
 
The new Earth Advantage research projects are outlined below:

• Earth Advantage joined the state of Rhode Island and its state partners Arkansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Oregon in receiving approximately $540,000 from the US Department of Energy to increase the adoption of energy labeling in the residential real estate market by aligning Home Energy Rating (HERs) and Home Energy Scores (HES) so that the data and scores are comparable and translatable. The project team will also create model home energy disclosure and rating policies for other states to replicate.

• Earth Advantage joined the City of Portland and its partners, New Buildings Institute, the Energy Trust of Oregon, and Portland State University, in receiving approximately $300,000 from the US Department of Energy to work on bridging the gap between the city's building energy disclosure ordinance and commercial building permitting process. The project team will assemble an integrated set of data about commercial buildings from multiple agencies and analyze it to identify the policy and regulatory interventions that have the greatest impact on energy performance, as well as future opportunities to further improve performance.

• Earth Advantage joined the city of Portland and the cities of Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, Vancouver (Canada), Copenhagen (Denmark), and Auckland (New Zealand) in receiving approximately $75,000 as a Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) Innovation Fund Project. Earth Advantage will coordinate the research in collaboration with a team of Portland housing providers and product manufacturers. The project team will test a Thermal Break Shear Wall system for simultaneous energy efficiency and seismic resiliency improvements in standard wood-framed housing stock.

* A carbon neutral building is one that causes no increase in CO₂ emissions. A zero energy home is defined as one that generates as much energy as it consumes, over the course of a year. A zero energy ready home is built “ready” for the addition of renewable sources but has not yet connected those sources, like solar panels, to the home.