Transcript for July 2019 Tribal Energy Webinar: Energy Considerations When Designing and Constructing New Tribal Buildings

James Johnson:          Welcome to everyone. I'm James Johnson, today's webinar chair. I'm a contractor supporting the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs Tribal Energy Webinar series. Today's webinar, titled "Energy Considerations when Designing and Constructing New Tribal Buildings," is the fourth webinar of the 2019 DOE Tribal Energy Webinar series.

Let's go over some event details. Today's webinar is being recorded and will be made available on DOE's Office of Indian Energy Policy and Program's website in about one week. Copies of today's PowerPoint presentation are now available, and a link has been sent out to find those presentations on the web currently. Everyone will also receive a post-webinar email with the link to this page, and where the recording is also located.

Because we are recording this webinar, all phones have been muted. We will answer your written questions at the end of the final presentation. You can submit a question at any time by clicking on the question button located in the webinar control box on your screen and typing your question.

Let's get started with some opening remarks from Lizana Pierce. Ms. Pierce is a senior engineer and deployment supervisor in the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs duty station in Golden, Colorado. Lizana is responsible for managing technical assistance and education and outreach activities on behalf of the office, implementing national funding opportunities and administering the resultant tribal energy project grants and agreements. She has 25 years of experience and project development and has been assisting tribes in developing their energy resources for nearly 20 years. She holds a bachelor's of science degree in mechanical engineering from Colorado State University and pursuit of master's in business administration through the University of Northern Colorado. Lizana, the floor is yours.

Lizana Pierce:            Thank you, James, and hello, everyone. I join James in welcoming you to the fourth webinar of the 2019 series. This webinar series is sponsored by the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, otherwise referred to for short, the Office of Indian Energy.

The Office of Indian Energy directs, fosters, coordinates, and implements energy planning, education, management, and programs that assist tribes with energy development, capacity building, energy infrastructure, energy costs, and electrification of Indian lands and homes.

To provide this assistance, our deployment program works within the Department of Energy, across government agencies, and with Indian tribes and organizations, to help them overcome the barriers to energy development. Our deployment program is composed of a three-prong approach, consisting of financial assistance, technical assistance, and education and capacity building. And this webinar series is just one example of our education and capacity building efforts.

The series is also part of the Office of Indian Energy's efforts to support fiscally responsible energy, business, and economic development decision making and information sharing among tribes. It is attended to provide attendees with information on tools and resources to develop and implement their energy plans, programs, projects, to highlight tribal energy case studies, and identify business strategies tribes can use to expand their energy options and to develop sustainable local economies.

On today's webinar, we want to move away from the energy generation focus that has been most of our webinars, and instead give energy conservation its turn. Generally, energy conservation is considered to be the first and typically the most economic option to consider when looking for ways to reduce energy costs. Even more specifically, this webinar will focus on how to include energy efficiency during the design and construction phases of new buildings. We hope this will give you some ideas and inspiration to make new buildings more energy efficient.

We also hope this webinar and this webinar series is useful to you, and so we welcome your feedback. Please let us know if there's any way we can make this better, or particular topics of interest. And I'd also like to in advance thank all of the presenters today for giving of their time and expertise. And with that, I'll turn the virtual floor back over to James. Thank you.

James Johnson:          Thank you, Lizana. On today's agenda we have five presenters, so it's a full slate. I will introduce each of the presenters now.

For our first presentation, we will hear from Jal Desai. Jal is a member of the modeling and analysis group in the Integrated Applications Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Jal Desai holds a master's degree in energy science, technology, and policy from Carnegie Mellon University. At NREL, he has been involved in performing energy audits, which include energy modeling, energy efficiency, recommendations, and renewable energy recommendations. He has also been involved in grid optimization and modeling and electric vehicle feasibility assessments.

Following Jal, we will hear from Margie Schaff. Margie has been an energy attorney for over 30 years, and manages her own law practice, Margaret Schaff and Associates LLC. She has successfully worked on the startup of three tribal utilities, and represents tribes on a variety of Indian legal issues.

Margie is also a partner in Kanim Associates LLC, where she assists tribes and tribal organizations with their energy-related issues, including utility planning, electric power generation projects, high voltage transmission issues, rights of way, energy strategies, and legal codes.

After Margie, we will hear from Jack Hebert. Jack is the chief executive officer and founder of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks, Alaska. He spent his early years in Alaska, wintering 60 miles from _____ community in the mountains of the Northwest Arctic, and summers in the Old Denali Park. His mentors and teachers were the people that lived in these environments, the first Alaskans that lived a traditional life, and the next Alaskans, homesteaders and pioneers that brought change to a timeless land. His relationship and commitment to Alaska were born from these deep roots.

For the past 36 years, Jack has been designing and building homes as a licensed general contractor in interior Alaska through his company Taiga Woodcraft and Hebert Homes, LLC. His homes and planned communities have created many high-quality, well-designed, environmentally appropriate and energy efficient buildings over a long career.

Following Jack, we will hear from Retha Leno. Retha is an enrolled member of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe. She has served as an executive director for the Akwesasne Housing Authority for the past 15 years, having successfully fulfilled low to high profile positions with the housing authority since 1994.

Retha began her tenure as director with a shift from the standard construction methods of development to a progressive consciousness in renewable energy opportunities and sustainability in construction practices within all of the housing authority's projects. Currently, Retha is responsible for management of 200 mutual help housing units and 41 low rent housing units for the elderly, along with the administration of several social and energy efficiency programs and services within the AHA.

This summer, the housing authority will construct the first permanent supportive housing project with the addition of 18 units of affordable housing for homeless Native American veterans, and _____ population frail, elderly, or disabled tribal members. AHA is also building the tribe's first community-scale photovoltaic generation plant that will enable the AHA's Sunrise Acres facility and the Akwesasne Boys' and Girls' Club to move towards becoming the territories first net zero facilities, and will offer solar incentives to its low to moderate income families.

Our final speaker is Mr. Bruno Zagar. Bruno is an environmental specialist and energy project manager for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. He has been there for the last 17 years. He works with staff on strategic energy plans to accomplish energy efficiency goals, make energy generation choices, and other institutional and administrative choices. Bruno is a founding member of the Midwest Tribal Energy Resource Association, and Heating the Midwest with Renewable Biomass. He wrote energy specifications for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Oneida Nation, Anomini Nation, the Wisconsin Energy Star Rating Training Program, and the Wisconsin State Energy Code. He is a member of the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group.

So that's all five of our presentations. I apologize for kind of just burning through those, all five of our speakers, but we've got a lot of content. So let's just jump right in with Jal's presentation. Jal, you're free to proceed once your slides are up.

Jal Desai:                   Perfect. Thank you, James. So hello, everyone. Thank you for joining today's webinar. So topic for today's presentation is Energy Modeling Tools. Monica, next slide, please.

So the presentation covers the following contents. So why do we need energy modeling software, modeling inputs in general, then building energy modeling tools, and then common energy, water, and renewable measures in the existing or new build homes for residential and commercial. And I thought that this would be interesting, so I included in the presentation. Next slide, please.

So why do we need energy modeling software? So in 2018 – okay. Sorry. My bad. In 2018, the residential and commercial sectors accounted for about 40 percent, or about a quarter billion British thermal units of the total US energy consumption. Opportunity exists for project teams to utilize energy modeling software to help them evaluate design decisions in terms of life cycle cost impacts in order to maximize the building performance. Building energy performance is a function of numerous interdependent internal and external factors, such as material selection, mechanical and electrical systems, climate, and occupant usage.

So modifications of various design components can produce complex interactions, and it will be difficult to analyze them in isolation. And so let me give you an example in this case. Let's say we know that replacing incandescent bulbs with LED would save a lot of kilowatt hours, but at the same time, due to the interdependent interactions, it might require a little bit more energy or fuel to heat the building or the zone, as incandescent bulb produces more heat than the LED. And that's where building energy modeling software comes into the picture. So building energy simulation software provides tools and tools for evaluating energy impacts across dynamic interrelated systems. Next slide, please.

So modeling inputs in general. So if you simplify, there are three basic steps to create an energy model. So step one, so the energy auditor would go on the site and would collect the data which fully defines the building and energy consuming features. And so the list of data required to build an energy model are let's say drawings or utility bills, equipment schedules, lighting drawings, square footage, what's the occupancy – is it 24/7, Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM – the schedules of mechanical equipment, and then building functions, purpose, and usage.

So once the energy auditor collects this information, he would fill out the model and run different simulations. So what he would do is he would copy the monthly output tables to an Excel spreadsheet and calibrate the model within five to ten percent of the monthly or annual utility bills.

And the step three would be using the model to run the what if scenarios to calculate the energy savings associated with identified energy conservation measures. So let's say if the baseline or the reference case has incandescent bulbs and now you are replacing with LEDs or with programmable thermostats – those are the what if scenarios, and that's where you would see that – what energy you would save by replacing – by implementing those energy conservation measures.

So now moving on to building energy modeling tools, and so some of the tools that I will be discussing are easy to use, and some might require prior experience. So the first one is BEopt. So BEopt, it stands for Building Energy Optimization. It's a residential building energy modeling tool. It provides capabilities to evaluate residential building designs and identify cost-optimal efficiency packages at various levels of whole house energy savings, along the path of net zero. And so BEopt provides detailed simulation based analysis based on specific house characteristics, such as size, architecture, occupancy, location, utility rates. And the picture that you see on the top right, that's the interface of the BEopt, and the bottom right is the output screen. Next slide, please.

And so I would like to highlight one of the case studies where we used BEopt modeling. And so it was for Kwethluk in Alaska where we did _____ to walk through energy audit. And so the top left picture that you see, that's the actual house, and on the top right that you see is the BEopt model. And so what we did was we looked at the four measures that can be implemented in the house.

So the first measure was the air sealing changed to 7 ACH50, replacing the windows with low-e double pane. Then R-60 attic blown-in insulation, and then 100 percent LED lights. And when you implement all of these measures, it would save them around about 20 percent. And when you put a dollar amount, that's a lot, because the _____ are the utility rate in Kwethluk is around about $0.23. Next slide, please.

So the second tool is eQuest. So eQuest, which stands for the Quick Energy Simulation Tool, is a commercial building energy modeling tool. So the Quick Energy Simulation Tool, or the eQuest, is DOE-2 interface, which allows users to develop three-dimensional simulation models of a particular design.

This simulation incorporates building locations, orientations, wall/roof constructions, window properties, HVAC, day-lighting, and different combinations of energy conservation measures. And so on the top right that you see, that's the eQuest model representation of the actual building, and on the bottom right that you see is the eQuest which is calibrated to the baseline energy usage.

And so eQuest can be used at every stage of building development, from early stages to final stages. So there are basically three input wizards in eQuest. So the first two is design and schematic, which are used to design and construct the project, while the third one, which is the energy efficiency wizard, is used to make comparisons.

And eQuest graphical interface with reasonable default valuables makes it easy to develop a building model, and while 2D and 3D geometric capabilities allow for easy viewing of the floor and/or building. Next slide, please.

So the third tool is OpenStudio. So it's another commercial building energy modeling tool. So OpenStudio is a cross-platform collection of software tools to support whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus and advanced daylight analysis using Radiance. And the graphic that you see on the right, that's the interface of the OpenStudio. And so the OpenStudio is the front end of the EnergyPlus. So Energy Plus is an energy analysis and thermal load simulation program. So EnergyPlus is not a user interface. It is intended to be a simulation engine around which a third party interface can be wrapped. So OpenStudio is the front end of the EnergyPlus. Next slide, please.

So OpenStudio and EnergyPlus adoption, so EnergyPlus directly supports several public and private sector tools and services. It supports additional applications and services via the OpenStudio platform. So you must have heard or must be familiar with the softwares that are listed here. And so the foundation of all of the softwares listed here is EnergyPlus or OpenStudio. Next slide, please.

So the ResStock is Residential Stock Modeling Tool, and so ResStock analysis tool is helping states, municipalities, utilities, and manufacturers to identify which home improvements save the most energy and money. The ResStock software is offered at no cost, leveraging Department of Energy's open source building energy modeling system of OpenStudio and EnergyPlus. And the figure that you see on the right hand side is _____ millions of simulations on supercomputers with different housing characteristics, and then came up with top ten cost effective improvements for each state. And the color code represents how much percentage of energy savings is achieved if all of those measures are implemented.

And so let's say I'm based out of Colorado, and if you click on Colorado – next slide, please – this is what you would see. And so the top ten improvements for Colorado are listed over here. Let's say LED lighting, smart thermostats, R-49 attic insulation, and then you see the dollar value on how much savings would be – or savings associated with each of these measures. And so you can check for your respective states and see what are the top ten improvements which would save energy and money. Next slide.

So RETScreen is renewable energy modeling, so it's a clean energy management software which was developed by the government of Canada for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and c—generation, project feasibility analysis, as well as ongoing energy performance. And the graphic that you see here is the interface of RETScreen tool.

So these tools are related, but non-building energy modeling tools, and I was told that these tools have been covered extensively in the past webinars, so I will just skim through all of these tools. So the first one is PVWatts, which is a solar PV modeling tool. So it allows homeowners, small building owners, or installers and manufacturers to easily develop an estimate, the performance of the potential PV installation. And it's a free web-based tool, and it's very easy to us. Next slide.

So this is System Advisor Model, which is SAM, for modeling renewable energy. So it's a free software that combines detailed performance and financial models. And these are the technologies which can be evaluated, so photovoltaics, battery storage, wind, geothermal, biomass, and solar water heating. And then you can do the techno-economic analysis using SAM.

The third one is the MotorMaster. So it models motor energy use, and it's free web download as well. Next slide, please.

So the other tool is HOMER energy microgrid energy modeling, so HOMER, which is the Hybrid Optimization Model for Multiple Energy Resources, is used to model and optimize conventional electric generation microgrids with high penetration of renewable energy. And there are free as well as paid versions of this software which are available. Next slide, please.

And so please feel free to visit the webpage and browse and explore various data and tools based on different technologies. And all of these tools are free, and there are training tutorials as well.

So in the interest of time, I'll just quickly go through these measures. So common energy, water, and renewable measures, so this is for the existing or the new build residential or commercial buildings. So this is an interesting graphic. So on the scale, if you go from left to right, it shows the investment required for the energy conservation measures which can be implemented. So the left-most, which is at no cost, so energy awareness, which does not require any cost, is the least expensive one. And if you go to the right-most side, which is the most expensive, is replacing any chiller or boiler or any other equipment replacement. And so those are capital intensive.

And so typical measures considered for ECM is the heading, ventilating, and air conditioning, which is HVAC, the lighting, plug loads, and building envelope, and there are water conservation measures, renewable energy measures. So ECMs are typically more financially viable than compared to the renewable energy measures. And then it's said that once you do all the energy efficiency measures first, and then you can size your renewable energy system based on the reduced or more efficient load. And the last one is doing the operation and maintenance and commissioning and recommissioning.

So I'll just skim through this. So these are the behavioral and no-cost ECMs. You can analyze the utility rate structure and see where you are spending more. Run an energy awareness campaign, and use setback temperatures on all the HVAC equipment. Next slide.

So for HVAC, let's say install a programmable thermostat, so that might be for a residential house, but all of this – some of them are for commercial buildings.

And so for lighting, replace all the incandescents and CFL bulbs with LEDs. Implement task lighting, install light sensors, install wireless lighting controls. And for plug loads, whenever – go for Energy Star equipment, and use laptops and LDC monitors instead of desktop and CRT monitors in an office space. Next slide.

And so for building envelop, it's roof, increase the amount of roof insulation, retrofit existing roof with green roof or cool roof. Walls, add more insulation. Windows, replace old or single pane with double pane windows. And doors, install adequate weather stripping or replace traditional doors with revolving doors. Next slide.

And so the water conservation measures is using EPA WaterSense labeled products, so that's similar to Energy Star. So this is for the water. And use less water consuming appliances. And for toilets, urinals, shower heads, use low-flow water. Next slide.

And so for water conservation measures, a cooling tower might be for a commercial building. And irrigation, so reduce water needs by xeriscaping. Procure water from alternate source. Install efficient irrigation system. Next slide, please.

And so this one is renewable energy measures. So the common renewable energy technology is onsite photovoltaic array system or solar hot water, wind, biomass, or solar vent preheat.

And so this is doing regular operation and maintenance. And so O&M programs targeting energy efficiencies are estimated to 5 percent to 20 percent on energy bill, so regular maintenance needs to be done, which would save energy.

And that's all I had. Thank you.

James Johnson:          Thank you, Jal. We'll take your questions at the end of the webinar, along with the questions from all other presenters. So next, we will hear from Margie Schaff. Margie, you're welcome to start as soon as your slides are up, and Jal, thank you once again, and you've got a lot of cool tools to geek out on there for anybody that wants to spend the time modeling alternate scenarios for their buildings.

Jal Desai:                   Sure, and I'm happy to direct to the resources as well and all of the training videos and tutorials for people who are interested.

James Johnson:          Thanks, Jal.

Jal Desai:                   Thanks, James.

Margie Schaff:            Well, good morning or afternoon, everyone, depending on where you are. We're kind of around the lunchtime here. My name is Marie Schaff, and I'm an energy attorney. I work with Indian tribes on energy development and energy projects throughout the United States.

I would like to kind of have as my main goal today to talk about the importance of energy planning and the importance of having the energy plans incorporated in any building design or community design as you go forward. And I want to break that down, kind of as the agenda says here, into four parts. First, just what are the ideals for new energy development? Secondly, a little bit about infrastructure. Third, choosing your contractors. And then building – excuse me – considerations, and beyond building codes. Next slide, please.

So the first topic is really about setting your goals and communicating those goals. So the picture here is basically an example of the lack of energy planning and the lack of having goals and the lack of having a structure under which you can create a much better system of using energy over time.

So it's very important, obviously, to set your goals, and that takes the tribe's community to sit down together and decide what do they really want, because a lot of times, energy goals are not mutually exclusive. If you want to create jobs, it may not be exactly in line with saving money, for example, or sometimes they are in line. You just have to talk through the goals and talk through what the community is most interested in doing.

And that leads to your energy planning, but then your energy systems are what's really important. It's very important to have systems in place that actually do something with the goals and so forth that you have set for yourself. Next slide.

So just a few statistics on energy in buildings. I think as Jal said, the – about 39 to 40 percent of the total US energy consumption was consumed in the residential and commercial sectors, and high performance design buildings typically use 50 to 70 percent less energy. So if we can design the high performance buildings, we can save about 20 percent or more of the nation's energy use generally, and that's all something within our own power, as we build buildings, and we all know Indian country is building. There's a lot going on out there.

Energy is the number one driver of housing costs, and that's over time. So by not considering energy in your housing, you've lost a huge opportunity to control your costs over the long period.

According to the – whoops. Go back. We're not quite done there. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, utility costs also place a significant financial burden on the 35 million low to moderate income family households. So 20 to 50 percent of low income households, often their income is used for energy.

Office buildings are also an issue in the US. The US spends an annual average of $1.34 per square foot on electricity and $0.18 per square foot on natural gas, and that represents about 19 percent of the total expenditure for the typical office building. So clearly, energy is a significant operational cost deserving management attention. So you can move on, please.

This is a place I just consider people to dream. You know, dream big. Dream for what you want and what are your visions for the future, because if you don't have those ideals in mind, you can't reach them. And it's best to consider it and figure out what it is that you most want. Next, please.

And then it's also an expression of your sovereignty to put these environmental and long term goals, whether it's cost of use or whatever else, into your communities and into your individual buildings. And by expressing your sovereignty, I guess what I mean is to make sure that these goals are communicated and make sure they're part of your tribal codes.

As we've heard from Jal, there are a great many free resources available for advanced planning. There's always local and tribally produced materials. Every tribe has its resources, and those resources have always traditionally been used by the people that were our ancestors for building their homes. So make your buildings reflect your culture and your sovereignty.

You also want to consider the health of the local utility system. Some utility systems are strong and inexpensive and well-managed, and other utility systems in different states are either poorly managed or very expensive or have huge cost systems. So when you're building your buildings, consider how in the future your utility, if it goes bankrupt or if it has major lawsuits pending or if it has major problems, or if its rates are going up in a skyrocketing kind of way, which we've seen in many parts of the country, that you may want to consider developing your project so you can eventually get off of those systems. If you can't do it immediately, you can always build into your buildings and your communities the ability to remove yourself from that utility if you need to, and that includes using tools like microgrids, local generation, whether it's renewable or something else that you have locally, using your own energy resources, and creating your own local grid.

Building – whoops. Go back. Sorry. Building long term energy and water efficiency into community and building design is much cheaper than retrofitting, so it's worth your time to spend a bit of attention on the front end to build this stuff in and do the advanced planning to take advantage of those cost saving design options. And oftentimes, those cost saving design options are free, such as passive solar, making sure that you're orienting your building in the right direction. It's the same building. You're just placing it in a different direction. And it may really have an impact on the heating and cooling of your building. Next, please.

The tribe can also obviously adopt national or state standards through tribal law, and this protects your sovereignty, because basically what you're doing is you're saying the tribe is going to decide what our standards are, and we will hereby adopt whatever standards we want to adopt. Oftentimes, it's easy to adopt the state law because the local contractors are used to working under those parameters, but it also gives the tribes then the ability under their own tribal law to say that they would like to change or alter something in the state law if they wish and make an exception.

So an example, of course, is the LEED certification, but that's only one example, and there are many others throughout the country. Next, please.

So some examples of energy and water planning practices. First of all, establish that holistic approach with defined high standards. I worked with one tribe who has a climate action plan, and those climate plans are very high standards, but they include such things as renewable portfolio standards that the tribe wants to effect, and those help them when they're designing buildings to know that they want to comply with the tribe's standards, and it also convinces the contractors and others working there that there is a different set of rules here.

Building codes, of course. We all know that they're very important. There are pros and cons in some of them. Of course, some building codes create additional expense, but they also create savings in the long run. So you have to look at those codes and make sure that you're applying them a way that the tribe wants to apply them.

Establish the tribal goals, such as your renewable portfolio standards, carbon reduction goals, water conservation goals, and energy efficiency goals, and then communicate them, especially through tribal codes that require the tribe and non-tribal builders or even the utility companies to meet established standards or consider various energy options.

When you're deciding on a new community, and I know a lot of tribes that are talking about building whole new communities, consider the location and the layout of those communities with the energy efficiency options, and of course, with renewable energy spaces and infrastructure systems, your utility systems, in mind.

Your project finance obviously can include renewable energy systems and efficiency elements and infrastructure designed to meet the goal. We all know that over time project finance has always include things like water heaters and everything else that have been traditionally part of a building, but just as they have included those things, they can also include other important energy efficiency and renewable energy, like higher levels of insulation, or geothermal heat pumps, or any other kind of systems that you want to finance directly into your building's design.

It also – generally, when you design a new community or a new large building, the finance includes a lot of the utility facilities, so the tribe is paying for those utility facilities. Maybe the tribe should own them instead of pay the utility to install them, and then the utility owns them.

Your RFPs, your requests for proposals for contractors, including designers, architects, engineers, construction trade, should stress environmentally friendly systems, and include experience required in those important areas. Next, please.

So that's kind of my first section. The next here is infrastructure considerations for new developments. Next, please.

These are just some examples of infrastructure pieces that can be planned into developments, and they're long term. Sometimes you plan for them, but you don't install them yet. You wait until the next phase of development to make an installation. Next, please.

The other thing that I've mentioned before here is where on the reservation should you locate your new development. Look at where your substations are, your wholesale service substations, because it's always cheaper to buy wholesale than it is to buy at retail. Where are the wholesale gas lines? It's always cheaper to buy gas wholesale at one master meter than at a bunch of small little meters. It does require a little more effort from the tribe to manage and operate those things, but we already manage and operate a lot of complicated systems, so that's just another one that can save you a lot of money.

Understand what the capacity is at your wholesale service system. So ask your utility, is the local substation available for upgrades? And what is the additional capacity? If we were to double the size of this development, would we need to build a whole new substation? So those kind of things can really save you a lot of money, because things like substations or gas lines can be very, very expensive.

They can also help you decide whether you need a local power source, and then they can also help you know where to place your solar and wind resources. The other option is _____ geothermal heat pump, which is something that is installed – it's easiest to install it when you're building the building, because it's part of the infrastructure of the building. And what soils and what water features or other things are best for the geothermal heat pumps? And then, of course, your water and sewer is a major expense when doing any development, so know exactly where the systems are already and what needs to be built. Next, please.

Another really important issue is metering. Where you put your meters and how many there are can impact what you're charged by the utility. A lot of utilities will charge you based on your meter readings, and so if you have one meter for two or three different buildings or for two or three parts of one building, you may have a much lower rate than if you have three or four meters on different parts of the building. So make this part of your negotiation.

That requires that you know your local utility tariffs. There are retail tariffs and wholesale tariffs, and they're really long, complicated things that are generally posted one very utility's website. But know how they apply to you, because if you can buy power under a wholesale tariff, or if you can buy gas under a wholesale tariff by having a different kind of wholesale meter, you're going to be paying a much different price than if you're paying for the retail price. Next, please.

Some examples that I've seen in my practice, I had a tribal utility formation where the resort was designed in the original design with a dedicated substation that served the resort, and one master meter in a loop off of which the customers could be added. So as they added new parts of the resort, they just added it to the existing loop. And that made a much easier opportunity for us to take over that system as a tribal utility.

Kind of in comparison to that, I had another client whose resort basically did not have a dedicated substation, and the lines which crossed through the reservation crossed over and served third parties, and there was no cohesive plan for how the tribe would use the electricity. They were just one of the many customers on that utility's system, which made it much more complicated to form a tribal utility.

Another thing that I came across one time is the gas and utility meter placement. We had one large resort that had four meters, and they were charged a much higher rate for a smaller usage than a qualified facility for the wholesale tariff. And so we changed it out to one meter, and suddenly, they saved hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in gas costs. Next slide, please.

When you're financing, as I've said before, we always have known in the past that traditional energy systems have been included in the financing of your development. So include the new types of energy system. Include solar panels. Include batteries. Make microgrid part of it. Do a ground source heat pump, or have smart meters. All those things can be part of the financing of any large project. Next, please.

Projects are only as good as the contractors who build them, so let's talk about that a little bit. Next slide.

So you have to look at all parts of the contractors, your design, your engineering, your architect, and your construction. It's really important that these folks all work together on a team approach, so that everybody kind of understands the goal, and everybody is working together to make sure that they're constructing the things that were designed. And of course, who you hire is really an important choice in meeting your energy goals. Do they have green experience, or do they just say they do? Are they committed to recycling? One of the other things that's happened with many tribes is that in rebuilding buildings, they have wasted a lot of material that could have been recycled.

Do they have experience in green codes and in doing things in a manner that is going to create efficient operations? Put those energy provisions, the efficient building plans, in your construction contract. Make sure the contracts reflect your goals and reflect what you want, and also know how you're going to enforce it. Do you have building inspectors? Do you have others that are going to walk through and make sure that all of these requirements are met? And of course, that's an additional expense, but it's an expense very well worth paying the price for. Next.

So just a few other things. Go ahead to the next slide. Some ideas that I've come across working with tribes and working on different projects, for one thing, use a culturally appropriate building stock. Like I said before, every tribe has resources in their local area, and whether it's wood, whether it's straw, whether it's mud, use the local materials and traditional knowledge in part of your construction and your design. Next, please.

The ancients always used local materials, and they used the local resources, including things like the sun. So when buildings are designed, they can go back to using some of these ancient ideas, like passive solar, making sure that when the sun shines in the summer, it isn't shining into the building, and when it is shining in the winter, it does shine into the building. And placement of your glass, and having a good thermal mass, and having the right shading is really important to those kind of things. Next.

Geothermal heating is a really great option, but again, it's something that is easiest to build into a new building rather than something you would retrofit buildings for, because it requires work underground, oftentimes, or requires work using the water systems. So geothermal heating is a really great option that really is oftentimes lost if you don't consider it in the beginning. Next, please.

You can do a lot of large scale things. When you're building your parking structures, make sure that you're assuring that solar panels can be used at the top of the system, and that requires engineering your parking garages a little differently, but it's really important to do that, if you ever have the idea to install solar. And you can always do it in the future.

You can also do small scale things, like have high efficiency wood stoves included in your plans, and then include also a wood delivery program as part of that – the whole system. It just is much easier if you design it in rather than try to do it later. Next, please.

Here's just some planning resources. I think Jal had listed some of these, too. But certainly HUD has some great performance contracting ideas. They have multi-family energy and water efficiency library. The DOE of course has energy efficient home design. And then, of course, we have one of our own Indian energy webinars on this project for housing authorities that I think is excellent. Next, please.

So for new housing developments, it's great to have your community designed in such a manner that you're making it walkable and you're making it accessible, but also so that you know where the shade trees are, and they're not going to be shading where your solar panels are going to be. So the whole housing development can be part of the plan.

And of course, how energy is used in the homes in your local area, whether you have a lot of cooling needs or a lot of heating needs, or if water has to be pumped from a long distance, those things should all be considerations in how you lay things out. Next, please.

For commercial developments, here are some resources. Energy Trust of Oregon has some great ideas, US EPA Green Building for Tribes Program, Sparks Northwest's Energy Planning Guide for Northwest tribes, but of course, other tribes are welcome to look at that, and then Office of Indian Energy, and then of course your utilities have a lot of programs, and they will also be able to tell you about their requirements and standards and give you advice as to how you can do things that will in the long run take advantage of the plans.

Then, of course, there's a lot of development professionals. Just make sure and bring them on early enough so that their advice isn't too late. Next slide, please.

Then there's a lot of great ideas for large projects, like casinos, resorts, and so forth. And this one is one that I got from the University of Colorado, who just built a new rec center, and they basically have their energy flow from the outdoor pool to the ice rink to the indoor pool to the domestic water, and it's all a big loop, and they save a lot of money, and it's a very high energy building, because they are using the cooling and the heating within different parts of the building.

So there are a lot of great reports out there and great information. I Googled green casino, and boy, there were some really neat resources that came up. And then there is the Sandia National Labs report that has the Mescalero Inn as one of its focuses. So that's a really good report, too. Next, please.

I guess that's it for me. Questions. I will turn the thing over to the next presenter, and everyone have a wonderful day. Thank you.

James Johnson:          Thanks, Margie. Any questions for you we'll take at the end. Interesting presentation. I like how you emphasized the value of taking this energy efficiency approach from the start and the major savings you can have just by making the appropriate decisions early on.

Next we have Jack Hebert. Jack, you're welcome to start now. Thank you.

Jack Hebert:               Great. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed both preceding presenters, and particularly Margie with some of the things that she shared with us. And love the opportunity to share with you some of the things that are happening up here at the top of the world. I'm not sure how familiar all of you are with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, but we are a private not for profit. We were founded by the Alaska State Homebuilders. As my intro said, I've been a home builder in Alaska for 40 years now. And so practical approaches, applied research that we can actually demonstrate. Next.

So as part of that demonstration, of course, we want to show what's possible. Our research and testing facility is the farthest north LEED platinum building in the world. We are – our design temperatures are anywhere from minus 70 degrees in Fairbanks to plus 100. So it is a place of extremes, and of course, Alaska has many very extremes everywhere you look. Next.

So our programs, these are some of our programs, and I'll share with you just a bit of mostly what we're doing in our sustainable northern community side, which is directly working with First Alaskans to improve the performance and health of housing through innovation and demonstration, to get it actually applied out there in the field. But these are our programs. I encourage all of you to please go to our website, see some of our studies and some of the work we're doing. Some of you may be familiar with what we are doing, but others not. Again, we like to think of ourselves as a little bit from the child book Horton Hears a Who, where we're sort of shouting out from the top of the world that we are here, and we want to be part of the discussion and contribute what we can. Next.

And we've done a lot in our communities that are on the road systems to really move us in a bit of a more conventional way towards housing that meets the highest standards. We have built net zero homes as far north as Fairbanks. We are part of a global community throughout the Circum-Polar North, and collaborate with all our colleagues throughout the top of the world here. Next.

But this is really the base I think for all of us finding a way forward at this particular time in history. And that is really to draw on this indigenous wisdom, that wisdom that we all have in the roots of our soul and our ancestors. But more recently, in the roots and the souls of the First People that were here in the areas that we live in in North America, and a respect for that, that really water, food, and shelter are our basic needs, and they always have been. So those are the precious things that we need to work on. Next.

And with that indigenous wisdom comes responsibility. I'm part of a large First Alaskan family here, one of the great epiphanies for me is the value system, where community is first, our family comes second, and individually, our own needs third, that it's really all about working as a community for each other, and as a global community as well. Next.

So the dilemma really is that we have been very sustainable in the way we live. Those principles have worked very well, and the successes from 15,000 years should be the successes that we draw on. Next.

And learning from nature of course is a big piece of that. It doesn't really matter how much you eat, if you don't have a good parka in the wintertime, you won't survive in this country, or in many parts of the North America. So as members of a world community, as a species that has to breathe and live and eat and respirate and find a balance with nature, we need to really draw on the tenets of sustainability that nature shows us. Next.

Alaska has huge needs. These are the numbers. We do a lot of policy research work in Alaska. This beautiful little – this little girl in the local right corner was showing us her house. We moved her bed away from the walls, because she wanted to show the hole in the floor beneath her home. This is just bad building science, and this is something that has been foisted on the First People just in the last generation or two, creating toxic environments that use a great deal of energy and are really dangerous and – dangerous to our health, and really dangerous to our safety. That house on the lower left of the slide there represents 30 percent of the housing stock in this community. You could push a number two pencil right through the grade beam. The house was rotting from the inside out, the houses there from the inside out and the outside in. And this is not atypical. Next, please.

So Sustainable Northern Communities is a program here, but it's based here in Fairbanks, but Sustainable Northern Communities spread throughout the North. And this now spreads off into Canada and our neighbors in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and the Inuit people further north and to the east. So it is a community, and working together, we think we can have a positive future. And I'll show you a few examples here. Next one, please.

Indigenous wisdom, again, is the base. Next. Along with 21st century technology. So it's the combination of indigenous wisdom and 21st century technologies. How do we live and utilize these technologies we have and keep that indigenous wisdom?

This is one of our first prototype homes that we did well over a decade ago, working with the community on the design to meet their lifestyle. This is in a _____ Eskimo community in Brooks Range. All the materials had to be flown in. They are People of the Land. Actually, they're called the Nunamuit, People of the Land, not of the sea, but of the land.

This is an area that has 18,000 heating degree days. It has no roads. It has very little material. And yet the culture that is there has been sustainable and vital for 15,000 years. Next.

So in the design of this home, and actually, Margie showed a picture of this house, the people were involved in the design, the people were involved in the construction. Again, these are People of the Land, the Nuna. And the land was something that protected them in the winter, with earth berming and the use of sod. The word Nuna is much more than land itself. It's the vital energy of the earth. So it connects all the pieces of the land and the earth in the forming of shelter in a sustainable way.

So in the case of this home, water and wastewater was on site. Alternative energy was built in. Sod was used as a surface for the home itself, which was very traditional, as well as earth berming. And certainly as importantly, heating and ventilation were a very critical part of this house, because with the high performance tight homes, we all know that indoor air quality can be a real issue. Thanks. Next.

So the outcomes were pretty remarkable on this home. From an average oil use, which is what – their only alternative, other than burning willows, of 1,400 gallons a year for a typical home, to 160 gallons of fuel annually. We could actually heat this home with the wind generator you see behind there, and electric hot water heater. But when you get your energy use down to 160 gallons of fuel a year annually in a 18,000 heating degree environment, energy costs are not your biggest problem. Next, please.

This is an example, again, the reflection of culture. The first one you saw were People of the Land. This group of people that we're working with are the Upik people, who live on the coastal area. This is the form that called to their ancestral memories, this shape right here, which is very much like their ancient ancestors in the yurt-like forms that – as they came across from Eastern Siberia across thousands of years ago. This memory was still with them on how a form – the house should be formed, the vernacular of that house. Next, please.

So working with them, we worked on a design. This has a lot of leading – cutting edge building science. One is this thermal wrap foundation, which is actually an R-120 foundation, which is going on frozen ground, that is modeled – and it was really interesting on Jal's presentation on the modeling. We do a lot of computer modeling with collaboration with the university on our foundation types, and how to stabilize soil and keep it frozen, and of course, insulation is your first and best approach. Next.

So each of the pieces of this house were able to go on one plane. So this is one DC6 flying all the pieces for one home into a community. Thermal bridging, of course, is the big piece of the thermal envelope, to not allow any thermal bridging between the inside and the outside, with our extremes in particular. Next.

And constructability, that you could build this home in 14 foot sections in a small space in the wintertime, and then assemble the home in the summertime. So the idea of utilizing the resources that you have and the challenges that you have to inform your decisions. And of course, the people themselves are the greatest resource, always.

Primary language of this community is Upik, so as English speakers – and in Alaska, we have 27 official languages – as English speakers, we're really not sure many times what the conversation is, but we're just hoping that it's not about us. So we work very closely with the communities in friendship and collaboration. Next, please.

Local labor and instruction of local folks in the techniques of what we're doing is absolutely essential for the movement of this kind of effort to go forward. People always built their own houses, traditionally. No one built them for them. These are highly skilled, very creative people. Their skills and their values have been deeply diminished by the colonizers, and this is reawakening that sense of pride and strength in the people themselves. And building your own home, just like harvesting your own food, is essential to the building of that – of that confidence, and also pride in the traditions of a deep and rich culture. Next, please.

So in the Quinhagak House construction, of course, the folks worked with us, but the idea wasn't to just stop with this first building. Next slide. But really, again, a super high performance building, built in six weeks with good indoor air quality, light materials, high owner comfort, significantly less cost, and durable. But – next slide, please. It's moving a prototype into production, so that the people themselves are building their homes now, an affordable home, affordable home to live, affordable home to build. These are huge challenges everywhere, and particularly in our isolated communities in Alaska. Next, please.

So in this case, the Quinhagak House, and this was the community that 30 percent of the homes in this community are at catastrophic structural failure due to bad building science. The highest upper respiratory distress in infants, children, and the elderly in the nation, a very toxic environment foisted on a people who lived a healthy life for centuries and centuries. So bringing shelter to the people, shelter that's theirs, that reflects who they are, that meets their lifestyle, their subsistence needs, and in this community, 80 percent of the food for this community is gathered locally from the sea and the land and the air. So very remarkable people with great strength. Next, please.

Again, I showed you what the fuel usage was. It actually was lower than our modeling thought it would be. This was both domestic, hot water, and heat. Next.

So we are involved deeply in whole village relocations. I think probably each of you out there is aware of what is going on with Alaska with this climatic change that we're experiencing. Most of the communities are really in a place that may or may not have been traditional or appropriate for the people that lived there. In the case of Newtok, the reason that that community was put in that particular spot is because that's where the folks that were coming in with religions brought the people and where the school was put, so the people moved to this spot. But it's rapidly disappearing, and we're involved in a whole relocation of this community. Next, please.

This is what it looks like now. They are losing homes to the sea. Many of our communities in coastal Alaska don't have the pack ice that they used to have. Not only are sea levels rising, but erosion is increasing, and the land is subsiding. As the ice goes out of the soil with this warming, the houses and the land go down. We've seen soils drop as much as seven feet under a pile-driven home. So the house that was once near the surface of the land is now seven feet in the air. Next.

In the case of Newtok, this foundation on the house that was designed for that community is a foundation that can be moved, so it's a triodetic foundation on skids. We've talked to our Canadian colleagues about this concept as well, because the Inuit people in many cases, at least in the ancient and recent past, have moved out on the ice in the wintertime, where the food is, and back on the land in the summertime, when the ice starts to thaw.

So this particular foundation was designed so that this house could be moved to the new location in Mertarvik, which is an island ten miles away across the ice. Next.

And so this is a new house being assembled in Mertarvik. Right now, there are 16 homes going in, a lot of activity. The expense of this relocation is huge, and it is only one of many villages – we have 28 imminently threatened communities that need to move in Alaska. And of course, traditionally, using local materials and those ancient ways, the people would just move, but now, with a different lifestyle and different needs and different wants, the moving of a whole village is a whole other effort.

So we work not just with the homes themselves, but with the infrastructure that supports the homes, with the subsistence resources and the protection of those resources that are in the new areas. Next.

So that's just a close up that foundation. It's a Canadian foundation and works very well. It's just one approach. This house was also built with what's called an integrated truss. The walls, the floor, and the roof system are one truss, so it could be shipped in a truss component that can be tipped up. And our first work on this, we built nine homes in six weeks with volunteer labor in another community that had been – was responding to disastrous flooding and ballistic ice that destroyed the homes. Next, please.

So Newtok, Mertarvik is well on its way. Keep it on your radar. Watch what's going on there. Next, please.

But these are the challenges we're facing. That house I was talking about with seven feet of subsidence, take a loo at that house on the lower right hand side. That's just the soil dropping away, soil that's 60 to 70 percent, the interstitial space in the soil is ice. When it melts, it goes down. And when your community is on the coast, when that happens, you lose the community, the whole community.

Ballistic ice I mentioned, where our breakups on our rivers are very different than what they used to be. We'll have a couple of different breakup and freezing cycles that cause this problem of massive flooding, and not only is it flooding, but at the time of the flooding, there's also car-sized pieces of ice going through the community. That house in the upper right hand side was smashed with ballistic ice. Next.

A holistic approach was mentioned actually by Margie, and that is the real key, beginning with the people, beginning with listening. No one has ever listened to these tremendously successful folks with their rich culture and their fine values. No one listened. We brought them what we thought they needed, and that has been a mixed blessing, not all bad, but a very mixed blessing. Next.

These problems are everywhere. They're being felt first in Alaska. We think that – well, if – facts show that this global climatic change and wave is being accelerated in the far North. But these kinds of issues are issues that the rest of the world is or will be experiencing. So we have really got to work together to make this happen.

We want you to know that we are here in Alaska. We really want you to go on our website and see what we're doing, or give us a call. Include us in any work that you're doing in Alaska. Be sure that we're part of your team. Again, we've been here a long time with deep roots. We understand the problems. We're part of a family of Alaskans. And I think that we can contribute greatly to all the efforts that you're doing. Next.

Because really, our past is coming to an end, and it’s the future of our children and grandchildren that really matters. Our work, all of us on this conference, all of us, the Department of Indian Energy, and all of your collaborators, this is much more than just a job. This needs to be a passion. The things that we're facing together are onerous. We're strongest together. Community, family, self, the values we need to build our lives on. Next.

Thank you.

James Johnson:          Thank you, Jack. Just an amazing story there and series of projects _____, and we'll take any questions for you at the end as well.

Our next speaker is Retha Leno. Please start once your slides are up. Thank you.

Retha Leno:                Thank you, James. Hi. Thank you, James. Thanks, everybody, for allowing me to share the experiences of the Akwesasne Housing Authority. Really, all these discussions just inspire me to do even more and plan even more projects out. I've got a list going just from the past couple of presentations. And I really can't think of a more challenging geographical area than Alaska to create energy initiatives, so that's a big wow for me.

But anyway, next slide, please. I'd love to share our planning experiences on energy efficiency in our housing and our community. So thanks for having me, again. Next slide, please.

Just to give you a concept of where we're from, we are the – we come from – whoops. Something going on with the slides?

Monica:                      Yeah. Sorry. PowerPoint just quit on me. Hold on just a second.

Retha Leno:                I'll keep going. I've got my own slides up, so I'll just keep talking.

So we're from the contiguous community, Mohawk community of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, otherwise known as Akwesasne. So we live in a little hamlet in I'd say the northernmost part of New York, with many complications, as we are located in one state, two provinces, and two countries. So if you can imagine, we have a few challenges and complications living here, and a lot of the work we do, we come upon some of those challenges all the time, politically, financially, socioeconomically, personally, and environmentally. Next slide, please.

And as you can see, the AHA's mission is long. I'm not going to read this all to you right now, but just noting the fact that our mission does have efficiency, the word efficiency in it. So I'm happy about that. Next slide.

And I'll just take you through some of the accomplishments of the housing authority from 1984, for this past 35 years. So we've managed many community development projects, many housing projects under 1937 act, under NAHASDA. We've created the Boys' and Girls' Club in 2001. We've done lots of things since we were able to decide where we wanted to go with a lot of our projects.

So when I became director about 15 years ago, we decided to look into this green stuff, and we kind of cut our teeth on the construction of our Sunrise Acres phase two, which was at full capacity when we opened in 2012. Next slide, please.

And just to kind of give you an idea of where our hearts were at the time, so in recent years, we've really brought the practice of planning out sustainable design, renewable energy – first of all, we found out there was money in it, so all of a sudden there's points allocated to projects that had some green and sustainability in the project planning.

So as an example, we actually contacted the US Department of Energy Tribal Energy Office and we received some technical assistance twice, so we were able to really get a jump start in seeing where we can plan more of these projects. Next slide, please.

So we came up with a Akwesasne St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Strategic Energy Plan, and this was adopted by our community, and it's community-wide. All the tribal agencies have this, and this is something that we decided to do after our experiences with the first Sunrise expansion. We knew we needed to have a greater effort in a more regimented way if we were going to have these energy goals stick.

And we thought, okay, we're successful at this project. Let's keep it there, and let's be a model, and let's bring the whole tribe into it. So this whole exercise was brought – brought the tribe into the same vein, and thinking for our future energy goals and the direction from that point forward. So that was a really great exercise, and that's basically where we jump start a lot of our projects, and looking at that plan. Next slide, please.

So our phase one Sunrise Acres senior low income housing started in 1998, under conventional construction, and our phase two that I just talked about was where we cut our teeth in the sustainable design. And we included some solar PV, geothermal, sustainable materials, cork flooring, and just we tried to think of everything that we could do to put into this project.

So it was our flagship green project, and we really just learned by doing. So we wanted to replicate that and continue that sort of work. So of course, we adopted the energy plan, and we got going on phase three, which is actually under construction now. Next slide, please.

But just to kind of review what we've done in our phase two expansion, we added 20 new two-bedroom apartments, and we added a training space for AHA and community groups. So this is just something that we felt strongly that we needed to expand our neighborhood and add these units for the elders, and it was a big success. Next slide, please.

So I'll just show you a few pictures of our neighborhood. And it turned out to be a beautiful, beautiful day when we opened, we had our opening in July of 2011, just to show you a couple of different things. Next slide, please.

Energy efficiency body – building envelope, just to show you a few pictures. The next slide, please. We added a geothermal system in the planning. We wanted to try that sort of technology out.

So all of these are new to me and my development team, and we really learned a lot. We learned what we want to continue, maybe what we don't want to continue. Geothermal in our area may not be the best option for us, because of the very cold climates we have. Next slide, please.

Photovoltaics. We added some solar arrays, ground mounts, up to 30 kW, and we're actually going to expand that with our next project. Next slide, please.

And the domestic hot water, we added this on the rooftops, and this actually provides I'm going to say more like 100 percent of the hot water demand in these 20 units, because we – they're seniors. They don't use a lot of energy. So we had planned for 50 percent, and we don't even touch the backup electrical hot water heaters. Next slide, please.

And the energy efficient HVAC system, the in floor radiant heat was a great success. And when the seniors get cold, they feel it in the floors. And we have to up the temperatures a little bit here and there, but that's been working well for us. Next slide, please.

The energy efficient lighting. One of the things that was really cool to add was the daylight – solar day-lighting tubes in the training center and in the bathrooms of the senior apartments. And they can't even – they don't even have to turn on the lights in there. It's pretty cool. Some of the ladies called and said, I don't know how to turn off the lights in the bathroom, and it was really the day-light tubing. So that was kind of cool. Next slide, please.

And we used locally milled woodwork, quality woodwork that will last a lifetime, we believe, and it's holding up very well since we've opened. Next slide.

And so energy. We've realized 60 percent of energy savings and realized 51 percent of the cost savings. So number one, we're not using fossil fuels. We're just using electric with the geothermal and with the solar power on site. Very happy with this. And we're going to be expanding. Next slide.

Our phase three expansion is actually under construction now, and this is where planning needs throughout, I guess, and there has not been another tribe New York State that has all of a sudden been able to access these sources of funds. Community Renewal in New York State holds the Home fund, so we were able to get a couple million dollars in Home fund. We were able to get some homeless housing funds. We got an AHP grant from some home loan bank in our district, along with our Indian Housing Block Grant. We were able to add ICDBG funds to the mix, and then we accessed some state NYSERDA – Energy Research and Development Authority. There, we actually accessed three or four of their programs in order to move this project towards LEED _____. So next slide, please.

So our project goals have to do with – so the actual construction project is two new buildings, a seniors building with 12 supportive housing apartments with open concept. They have all their own kitchen and laundry facilities. The veterans' building is for homeless veterans, consisting of six apartments and common spaces, lounge, office space for service providers. And one other thing that we're just learning about is the supportive housing aspect of things. So a lot of this, we're just really cutting our teeth and learning as we go, and it's turning out to be just a beautiful project altogether.

And of course, the sustainable design strategies, the solar power, PV off-site net metering will hopefully get us to new zero. And we are going for the silver LEEDS certification, and we are at 80 percent completion, and we hope to rent up these units on October 1st of this year. Next slide.

So the planning canvas, as I call it, this is the aerial site of Sunrise Acres. You can see to the left the five buildings that consisted of Sunrise Acres 2, and then where the white oval is is where our supportive housing is going now, and in the middle part is where our original units are, and our warehouse and administration offices. Next slide.

And I have to say – I have to give kudos to our tribe. Our St. Regis Mohawk tribal leaders were very, very supportive of all our efforts, going green, and anything experimental we want to try, they're like, yeah, let's try that. That could definitely help and support these projects.

So just having them support us in our projects makes a huge difference. In fact, they allocated us additional acres to expand Sunrise for this project. And one of the things that we needed to do, because of the – now the state agencies were involved, was to work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on a leasing contract. And if anybody knows New York State, we don't really deal with the BIA. But in this case, because we wanted to access these funds, we were able to get a – start a relationship with the BIA, and we were able to work with them with the project.

Environmental was a huge thing. We had to complete four different environmentals, because now the state agencies were involved, and they required state _____ environmentals. We had to do of course our federal HUD environmental, but we also had to do a HUD – two HUD environmentals, one for the state and one for the _____ American Programs, and plus, we had to do a tribal. So that took a lot of planning and a lot of back and forth.

And, of course, we had to use – and we had to encroach on the wetlands – that's bad – by an acre and a quarter, but we were able to do that with not really a problem, but we just hate spending – you know, spending money out the door when we can use it on – but that's the wetlands for you. Next slide, we'll show you some pictures of our progress on the unit.

So the veterans' supportive housing, we just did a walk-through last week, and it's coming along very, very well. We're happy with the progress. The photo on the right hand side is the communal space that we fought for, because the state regulations required like a 15 by 15 space for communal space, and we're like, nope, we need a little bit more space. So that was – it turned out beautifully. Next slide, please. Just a little bit more of the six unit veterans' building.

The one on the right side is the back porch. There'll be a sitting area out here with some furniture. Next slide. And just showing kind of the backyard part of it. The grass is starting to grow, which is cool. And the next slide will show the construction site on the supportive housing, seniors' 12 unit supportive housing, and that's just right next to the veterans' building on the site. Next slide. We're just showing some more construction. I didn't get any inside photos on it, because it was pretty dark in there. Next slide, please.

And so what really ties this in I think as far as the cooperation, an important collaborative tie-in called the Go Solar! initiative. This is something that the Department of Energy helped us with in support of our projects. In trying to keep our utility costs low, we thought, let's try to do a community facility solar project. So the tribe actually gave us the 25 acres to work with, and we're using 8 of those acres – and why I asked for 25 acres was because I knew that if we started this, somebody else is going to want to continue it, so we designated this 25 acres so that there could be future growth and expansion of the net metering program that we're allowed to do in New York State.

So this is key, because we are attempting to go net zero for all of the Sunrise Acres facilities, and part of the Go Solar! project is to assist the low and moderate income families with solar credits on scattered sites lessening their housing burden and bringing – we're hoping to save them 30 to 50 percent of their utility – with their electricity bill. And it's clean green, and it's something – we're taking the opportunity to start educating families on where their power and where their utilities come from. So we have an integrated program that will allow kids and families to participate. Next slide, please.

So then our plan to supplement power usage of the AHA, like I said, we want to offset our energy usage at Sunrise Acres through remote net metering. And the 25 acre parcel will be used for future solar, thanks to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Council. And going net zero, like I had said.

And one of the biggest factors in planning is to really go out to sources, other sources that can help. One of those sources was NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. We've accessed four of their programs so far, and one of them was to – we did a high energy efficiency initiative with some DOE funds, and with some Indian Community Development block grant funds, and we were able to assist up to 100 low to moderate income families with some energy efficiency measures installed in their homes. And that actually will bring their utility usage down.

So the other takeoff was that we assisted the Akwesasne Boys' and Girls' Club, and once our Go Solar! goes hot, we will hopefully be able to achieve net zero for the Boys' and Girls' Club, and we'll save them some critical program dollars so they can help even more kids in the program.

And then, of course, our plan was always to replicate this model for other tribal entities and agencies, so we're always eager and willing to share our experiences. Next slide, please.

So to me, the energy efficiency planning for new construction really, really works, and we're an example of how that can work. But the advice really is – I mean, we kind of jumped into it and then thought about it later, and then realized we needed a foundation, and that foundation is that energy strategic plan. So if you go through the planning phases of it, and I think Margie had touched on planning from the beginning in her presentation, it's indeed what we have learned to do.

So if you create that foundation for energy efficiency goals in your projects, the rest will come. And it's amazing that – I've talked with agencies within the tribe, and then it turned out we all had a common goal to conserve energy, which really boils down to conserving and saving money, and sparks that conversation. And by thinking outside the box and going after I call it the whole hog, go after, okay, what is our – what's our inspiration? What's our energy vision? And then go for it all, and maybe 50 percent of it will come true. Maybe part of it will, part of it won't. But I've found that when you start these conversations with agencies like the DOE, it really grows legs for you. Agencies are willing and want to help, and work with tribes.

And some of these agencies, like those in New York State that we're accessing now, had never worked with tribes before, but how do you know unless you ask? So we've learned a lot. We've been able to have successes where we never thought we'd have successes, and we are achieving a lot of _____ energy goals that we set out for ourselves as a community and as a housing facility.

So we have future aspirations, and we really want to do financing for solar installs for single family homes, and then some. The sky's the limit basically is my message, and ask, and have these conversations with these agencies, and people will be calling you up to ask, to help you out. So next slide, please.

And this is just a slide showing many of the partners that we've been able to work with over the past few years to bring our energy goals to realism. Next slide.

And thank you very much. I appreciated this opportunity to share our experiences. And you can always email me, ask me anything, and I will share with you further as the time allows. So thanks very much.

James Johnson:          Thank you, Retha. I appreciate the presentation. Cool series of projects you have there.

Our final presentation is from Bruno, and Bruno, you're welcome to join us _____ I guess now, and you have about 16 minutes left, so sorry we cut you just a hair short. but after your presentation, hopefully some of the panelists will be able to stay a little after the hour and take any last questions. But thank you. Go ahead, Bruno.

Bruno Zagar:              Great. Thank you, James. As you've been hearing, a common theme throughout has been energy management, strategic energy plans, just energy planning for your future. If we can go to the next slide, appreciate it.

Yeah, the – as you put together your energy plan, your strategic energy plan, you have several options. Your energy efficiency options, which is all your energy audits, so you have a baseline energy that you start with, _____ measure off of – before you move forward and do some of your measures.

And you look at your energy generation options. A lot of us have started to do some generation, but we haven't looked at an infrastructure, like you've heard before, when Margie was talking about look at your infrastructure, and if it's outdated, started looking at substation options. Because we have a substation that tens miles from our casino, so we're looking at that right now, too, and we've done some generation – plan on future generation. And then the administrative options, which you have to look at, too. Next slide, please.

We worked on a LEED building. We did a design competition, and we used the rebates to have the design competition, and gave an award to the best designer. This worked out really good. It was a really energy efficient building. And the biggest thing that I have not heard a lot of today – I've heard a little bit about it, but it's the specifications for the building. LEED is not an energy efficient requirement. LEED is local – using local materials, recycling materials, and a baseline energy package. So you have to specify the amount of insulation in there and put together building specs for LEED. It's an architect-designed system, so using everything you can to lower your energy use in the building. Next slide, please.

So energy efficiency, durability, materials, life cycle performance. A lot of times, people say, oh, well, I can't afford this right now, but if you do a life cycle analysis, you're going to be paying for it, anyway. Three to five years is the payback on most of those energy efficient performance items you're going to be putting into your building, your insulation package, your – but one of the bigger one, as you'll see on my next slide, if you want to go to the next slide for me, please, as you move forward in looking at your comfort, health, and the energy performance – if you can go to the next slide, please. Appreciate it. And then your durability and then operations of economics and performance and financing – you can move to the next slide. And just go to the next slide right after that, too, please.

A lot of times when you're building the home, you have to look at how those performance standards are applied into the building package, and think of the house as a system. Houses are great when no one's living in it, but once you add people to it, you have a lot of moisture going through that system. So if you don't have the package designed properly, you're going to have problems in the future.

So the thermal efficiency is very important, as you've heard, up in Alaska, from Jack. We have some of the same conditions here in Northern Minnesota. Next slide, please.

Air flow, heat flow, moisture flow, you have to look at all of these things, indoor air quality. Next slide.

When you're installing your house wrap, a lot of times people don't take it all the way up to the top at the gable end. They don't bring it all the way to the top of the wall. That needs to be done so that – because if water gets through, it's a secondary shedding mechanism for water. I've worked on a lot of buildings in my lifetime. I'm a master builder. And it's amazing what I've seen on buildings and how they're put together wrong.

So your air tightness approach, a wind can go right through insulation, so if you don't seal the walls, and there's holes through it that they drill in for electrical, plumbing, you name it. If you don't seal that, the wind's going to blow right through that insulation. Next slide, please.

If you look at this package, this was a R-54 attic, 26.5 wall that was spec-ed for 25. We got up to 26.5. And thermal breaks from the ground, from insulation for the concrete, isolating the slab and the outside concrete walls. This house package, we had a 1,200 square foot on a slab on grade to a 1,800 square foot – just the 1,200 square foot footprint, to a 2,400 square foot footprint, bilevel.

All of these houses, the total cost per year was $380.00 to $420.00. Lizana Pierce will remember this one. This was designed back in Oneida. We had put together a really good package, and we've done the same here at Fond du Lac. And you're spending about – that's the fuel cost per year, $380.00 to $420.00 for electric and natural gas or propane, total energy cost. Next slide, please.

So again, foundations must be insulated well. Framing should minimize your wood, if you can. Rather than 16 on center, 24 on center. Insulation, just make sure you have the proper insulation, and thermal breaks. Next slide, please.

And then sizing your equipment for the building. I worked specs for Middle Village up in Anomini, and they were trying to put in a larger furnace because they would minimize the insulation in the attic. And I said, "I did the – I wrote the specs for these buildings. I'm doing the inspections. You're going to put in the furnace that we're spec-ing for, not a larger furnace."

So they were used to putting a bigger furnace because people would cheat on the insulation at the end of the package. So we changed all of that, so things have gotten better over the years.

Biggest – passive solar and then window placement is a big part of the package. Passive solar, 50 percent south, 20 percent east/west, 10 percent north. Next slide, please.

This is a blower door test we're doing with infrared camera test also on a house that we built over here at Fond du Lac. We were able to seal up the building really well. This was a team of the person doing the energy audit from the local utility, the insulator in the middle, and on the right side is Kerry Martino, our project construction manager on the site. Next slide, please.

Again, just all your themes overlap, your house wrap, your – everything to do with the building is sealed properly. Next slide.

Your foam sheeting, yeah, always sealed. You can use on the outside of your wall OSB or foam sheeting. Your pan flashing around your windows and doors, we had a lot of rotting windows and doors years ago, just because the moisture was flowing to that area and then running right in. So how that's detailed really helps the building longevity, and a lot of that's moisture problems and rotting in the future.

And then the sump pump. You can install a Jackel sealed sump pump, so you don't have any gases. We've had radon issues here at Fond du Lac, and there is in several areas of the country. Sealed pumps, sump pumps, help a lot with radon issues. Next slide, please.

This just shows the detail of the thermal breaks, which you've heard a couple of times in presentations today. Isolating your inside of your building from the outside cold is imperative, because that cold transfers into the house. As you can see from this detail, as long as you have like 95 plus compaction on the basement, you never have any problems with cracking in the slab. And actually, if you thermal break the slab from the outside wall, if it cracks, it stays together. It doesn't adhere to the outside wall. So all of the buildings I've put together over the years, this works really well. I've been using this for 26 years now on buildings that I've built, and we've built all over the Midwest. Next slide, please.

Next would be an air exchange system with the amount of flow for the occupants in the building. If you can just go to the next slide, it'll show an air exchange system, along with a sealed combustion furnace. Can we go to the next slide, please?

So becoming an ally. As you saw in previous slides from previous presenters, partnership's huge. We partnered with Minnesota Power. They modeled our buildings for us for free. We were able to save easily 30 percent on the buildings' fuel costs just by modeling and putting your long side of the house south, and the windows 50 percent south, 20 percent east/west, 10 percent. And _____ insultation, energy _____ truss, so you can get a R-50 plus. Next slide.

And then sealing any bypasses. This was huge. I look back on soffits in old homes above cabinets, above bathrooms, and a lot of times they were open. there was just plastic there with insulation that fell down. And so there were huge bypasses to the attic. So we made sure everything was sealed well. Next slide, please.

So just, again, Fond du Lac Construction did the actual construction of the homes. Housing was a partner. Environmental program, who I work for, I was partnered with housing, making sure that we did everything right because of my background. Minnesota Power worked with us. We had meetings to develop specs and standards and incorporate those into the construction documents. If you don't have the specs and the construction documents, it's not going to be built the way you want it to. So make sure you have specifications. Next slide, please.

This is just showing the blower door. You either negatively pressure or positively pressure the building, and you could tell where the air leaks are. It's pretty easy to do. And that's pretty reasonable to even buy one and do it yourself. I used to do – I used to write – I wrote energy specifications. I used to have a blower door test. I used to do all the calcs and everything. Next slide, please.

So whether you're doing your – you have to do inspections. If you don't, you don't know what you're getting. So your framing inspections is imperative to see how many bypasses you have, and holes. Your insulation inspections. The blower door test just verifies what you inspected. And then you could do your software diagnostics from your blower door test. Next slide, please.

These are just a couple of commercial slides that – we have district heating systems that we've installed. We installed one at the Sawyer Community Center, so we're hearing with wood chips. Total fuel cost, now we've reduced their propane use and total fuel cost was like $5,600.00 last year. And we signed up for a Minnesota Department of Ag incentive, so we'll get ten years with the fuel for free with that program. It's a subsidy program for fuel. So this building was – if you go to the next slide, you'll see the air drying floor, which is the first of its kind in the country. If you think about air drying grain, air drying bulbs, air drying everything, it's all done with air. So we put 4,000 CFM fans in the floor with the floor drenched. We bring in wood chips. It's dry within three to five days. And then you have a win/win/win. You have less pollution, low moisture, your boiler works better, and more BTUs. So it's just a great system. We used the Javo toploader out of Holland, and a local boiler out of Minnesota. And a lot of good people came together to make this happen. Now we're looking at Brookston to install the same thing there at a community center and 50 homes for district heating. If you'd got to the next slide, please. Appreciate it.

I just wanted to show you where we're at. Back in 2007, we looked at signing onto the Kyoto Protocol. So we wrote a standard of 20 percent by 2020 reduction. We actually are at 50 percent reduction in fossil fuel at this time. And after we analyzed our forest with the National Indian Carbon Coalition – Bryan Van Stippen's been working with us. And we looked at our carbon footprint, and we're actually 80 percent reduction, when you look at your forest sequestering, and then what you've done with your building energy efficiency and your renewable energy products.

Our biomass is offsetting our actual output from all of our vehicles, so our vehicle transportation plan. And I think I'm at the end. One last slide shows the solar project. That's it. Thank you, and have a good day.

James Johnson:          Thanks, Bruno, for a bunch of your interesting projects and good experience there. Overall, we have tons of expertise on this call and tons of experience from our presenters, so please do ask your questions. I just have a couple of questions here now, and we are running up against the end of our time, but hopefully, we can stay after about five minutes, if there are any questions. So keep submitting your questions.

Let me pull up the first one here. This is a question probably just for the general – all the panelists. It says, are there copies of existing tribal codes, building codes, or energy portfolio standards or carbon reduction goals, available to share, to get an idea of what this particular tribe can do? They're trying not to reinvent the wheel. So anybody have thoughts on that?

Margie Schaff:            This is Margie, and I'm familiar with a number of different codes that have different goals in mind. And some are climate change related. Some are related to their utility service. So if you want to just send me an email of what you're looking for, I think there's probably quite a few out there that could be shared.

Jack Hebert:               From Alaska, we – this is Jack – we have the Building Energy Efficiency Standards that we've developed with Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, and I'd be happy to send you that link, if whoever's asking can get a hold of me.

James Johnson:          Okay. Thanks, guys. And your email addresses are on your presentations, so anybody who wants to follow up with direct questions to these panelists, their emails and often their phone numbers are available.

Another general question here. Are there any lessons learned from these projects? And I know some of you have already touched on lessons learned, but maybe some key takeaways. For instance, maybe issues dealing with LEED certification or new technology issues that might be applicable for the general audience?

Retha Leno:                This is Retha –

Jack Hebert:               We could spend a few hours on lessons learned. Sorry. Go ahead.

Retha Leno:                Who wants to talk first?

Jack Hebert:               No, I'm not going to spend two hours talking about lessons learned, but there are many here in Alaska. Thanks.

Retha Leno:                The only thing I could add to that is that there's a lot of technical things involved, and we really needed the expert advice of an energy lawyer that knows just what sort of programs are in your particular state and how to navigate and how to see what's available. There are resources, and DOE is a huge resource. NREL is a huge resource. But our lesson was that you can never be too educated about what's out there. And we really learned a lot from the – our advisors. And so it's good to have a good energy lawyer on hand.

James Johnson:          Anybody else? Okay. With that, we don't have any further questions, so it looks like we can move towards wrapping it up. Can you bring – oh, great. Thanks, Monica.

So wrapping up here, we are very interested in your suggestions on how to strengthen the value of this training in general, so please give us feedback on the webinar series. The last slide here shows the remaining schedule for the rest of the 2019 series. I will note that this October 2nd webinar has been moved. It's rescheduled to October 2nd. It was originally on September 25th. There was a conflict there. So if anybody already has that September 25th webinar on their calendar, it's moved to October 2nd. I'll send out corrections to anyone who's already registered.

But our next webinar, "The Unique Aspects of Energy Development on Tribal Lands: Land Leases, Service Line, and Right-of-Way Agreements on Tribal Lands," will be held on August 28th at 11:00 AM mountain daylight time. We look forward to hosting that webinar. And thank you for your interest and attendance today, and we look forward to talking on future webinars. That concludes today's webinar. Thank you, and have a good day.

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