By Arathi Gowda, AIA
There is a lot going on this season in the advocacy realm.
Heading into the cooler months of fall and winter, let’s put on our sweaters and consider how extra time indoors can be used to advance our advocacy efforts! Members of the COTE network and allied committees of Government Affairs Committee (GAC) and the Committee on Climate Action and Design Excellence (CCADE) have continued to advance our agenda in the last several months.
At the end of September, a group of 40 Architecture, General Contractor, and Engineering Firms representing 400 million square feet of projects annually wrote a letter in support of the US DOE’s proposed residential water heater efficiency, which will help speed the adoption of energy efficient renovations while still providing exceptions and efficiency targets for electric or natural gas applications. This ruling was brought to the group’s attention by AIA COTE friends in the Pacific Northwest, Kjell Anderson, Clark Brockman, and Chris Chatto, who received technical guidance on the letter from Geoff Wickes, an emerging technology product manager for the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA). Kjell, Clark, and Chris organized a collective action within Building Green’s “Green Commons” peer network, to sign a letter of support. Signatory firms hope to improve residential water heater efficiency standards, increase the adoption of heat pump technology, and accelerate our decarbonization pathway. To learn more:
Here is a link to the (TL;DR 425 page) DOE docket
Here is a link to the (TL;DR 409) comments already submitted
US DOE HPWH NOPR explainer deck by Energy 350 (summary)
In other news, the COTE Advocacy team has also been following the launch of ECHO (Embodied Carbon Harmonization and Optimization), read more about this important collaboration of sustainable committees with the AIA here and let’s commit to continuing to support their good work.
We expect to share notes from the COP 28 delegation in our next update, from an in person and virtual perspective. If you are interested in becoming part of the COTE Advocacy Group and Network, or even commenting on what you would like us to advocate for, please reach out to us via cote@aia.org.