February Forum: Energy 101: What do we know? What should we know?

Many of us breaking into, or even currently working in the sustainability business, are inundated with information about new and exciting technologies with claims of great energy savings (and even energy generation) from devices that cost next to nothing to devices that are very expensive. The question remains, are we focusing too much on the “sexy” technologies that make the headlines at the ribbon cuttings for multimillion dollar buildings and forgetting the nuts and bolts simple science that make our industry thrive? . Indeed, many existing buildings show dramatic savings by fixing the systems that they have and running them according to the original instructions (today called retrocommissioning); further, many new buildings use tried and true technologies, some of them centuries old, to increase comfort and reduce fossil fuel use.   Tonight’s presentation will wipe the slate clean, and start you on a logical fact finding mission about buildings: where should we start, what do we need to know, and what we can do to make buildings more efficient, affordable, durable, comfortable, safe, resilient, and profitable for the occupants and owners. Similarly, the famed football coach Vince Lombardi would open his training camp each year to the assembled team members, veterans and rookies, holding out a ball and saying “This is a football”. Tonight, we start from scratch.   Date: February 19, 2014 Time: 6:30 – 8:00pm Location: Trespa Design Centre, 62 Greene St., Manhattan, NY 10012   Click here to register!     Our speaker will be:   F.L. Andrew Padian is Vice President for Energy Initiatives for The Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), a not-for-profit affordable housing mortgage lender, where he is working in the implementation of the Green Financing Initiative (GFI) and NYC’s Sandy Recovery Program (Build it Back), working with CPC staff and building owners across New York City and State. He has 30 years of experience in the unique building science of multifamily buildings, and has performed detailed energy analysis on hundreds of buildings across the country. . Mr. Padian is a frequent contributor to energy and sustainable publications, and has spoken at numerous conferences across the country over the last 30 years (NESEA Building Energy, Affordable Comfort, Apartment World, National Weatherization Conference, National Multifamily Conference to name a few). He lives in NYC, and is involved in many sustainable causes there, including GreenHomeNYC (Board President), the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (Vice Board Chair) and the Clinton Community Garden. He served as the Conference Chair of NESEA’s 2008 Building Energy Conference in Boston, and Vice Chair of the 2009 Conference, each of which attracted over 3500 participants. In 2010, He received NESEA’s Distinguished Service Award, awarded to only 20 people in the last 40 years. He created the first national model for training and certification of building managers and maintenance staff of multifamily buildings for energy efficiency; over 2000 participants have taken the extensive 1 to 5 day training. . Last year, Mr. Padian chaired a joint NESEA-GHNYC Conference on Multifamily Sustainability, and a similar, larger one called Building Energy NYC (BE-NYC) on October 16th these events. Through GreenHomeNYC, Mr. Padian runs a sustainable jobs network called “GreenCareerMeetup” which attracts 30-50 people for each monthly meeting. For over 3 years, this 100% volunteer service has gotten one person per month a full-time job in the sustainability field.