SUNY Zero Carbon Portfolio

Atelier Ten provided zero net carbon and deep energy savings consulting to SUNY and SUCF to meet the new requirements for deep energy retrofits of existing buildings and the carbon neutral goal for new buildings.

Atelier Ten worked with SUCF to rewrite their Directive 1B-2, a requirement for all buildings to perform deep energy retrofits or carbon neutral design. To aid the universities and consultants to achieve the new performance targets consistently between projects, Atelier Ten developed a zero carbon design checklist. In addition, Atelier Ten developed a methodology for life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) to understand the financial performance of the deep energy retrofits and carbon neutral designs over time.

Atelier Ten developed the Energy Efficiency Design Guide for Net Zero Carbon Buildings and Deep Energy Retrofits with Pathfinder Engineers and New Buildings Institute that provides guidance on how to meet and exceed the requirements of Directive 1B-2 for university laboratory, academic and student buildings. By using Atelier Ten and Pathfinder’s extensive library of existing university energy models, the team re-ran the models with various changes for the New York State climate zones to develop prototypes for SUNY.

In 2019, the State of New York passed new legislature to reduce emissions called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). SUNY (among other state owned facilities) is now required to reduce their energy use by a fixed amount. Each campus of the SUNY system will have a target energy reduction and to get there, they will need to create an energy masterplan. Atelier Ten also wrote the RFP language for the campuses to use when hiring consultants to develop their campus energy masterplans. Atelier Ten wrote the guidelines on how the campuses can track their performance and collaborated with Pathfinder and New Building Institute to author the online guidebook