DATE: September 10, 2015
TO: Council Sustainability Committee
FROM: Director of Utilities and Environmental Services
SUBJECT
Title
Zero Net Energy Policy for City Buildings
End
RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
That the Committee reviews and comments on this report and recommends that the Council adopts the attached draft resolution (Attachment I).
Body
SUMMARY
This report presents a policy that, if adopted by Council, would require new municipal buildings and significant retrofits of existing municipal buildings to be designed and constructed as zero net energy (ZNE) buildings. This policy would be consistent with current General Plan policies and would help prepare Hayward for anticipated changes to the State building code.
BACKGROUND
A ZNE building is one that produces as much energy as it consumes over the course of a year. More specifically, the California Energy Commission (CEC) defines ZNE as follows:
"A Zero-Net-Energy Code Building is one where the net amount of energy produced by on-site renewable energy resources is equal to the value of the energy consumed annually by the building, at the level of a single "project" seeking development entitlements and building code permits, measured using the California Energy Commission's Time Dependent Valuation metric."
The Time Dependent Valuation (TDV) method encourages building designers to design buildings that perform better during periods of high energy cost. TDV is based on a series of annual hourly values for electricity cost and monthly costs for natural gas. The CEC is California's primary energy policy and planning agency and is responsible for forecasting future energy needs, promoting energy efficiency and conservation, and developing renewable energy resources. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regulates privately owned electric, natural gas, telecommunications, water and transportation companies. Th...
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