[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Consulting Specifying Engineer podcast. I'm your host, Anna Steingruber, joined today by Al Lapera to look at the big picture of decarbonization. Decarbonization has become one of the biggest buzzwords in this industry recently and so I'm very, very excited for this overview. Our guest today, Al Lapera, CXA EMP and lead ap, is the senior building energy practice builder for Kimley Horne. He has more than 47 years of experience working on a broad range of building types, including municipal educational, health care and commercial facilities. His specialties are in energy services such as systems commissioning, energy analysis and energy auditing, as well as H VAC system design from inception to construction administration. He also sits on the Board of Directors for the Energy Management association and serves on the AABC Commissioning Group or the ACG Education committee. He teaches ACG's National Commissioning Authority workshop and the Energy Management Professional Workshop. That is quite the resume. Thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate it.
Great. So let's start local. What environmental conditions are really driving decarbonization projects?
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Well, that is, you know, Anna, depending on who you talk to, you're going to get a different answer. That's like one of those things, you get 10 engineers or 10 scientists in a room, you get 10 different opinions. What you're going to get is my opinion that what is what I believe is driving it overall are a few things. One is there is the global warming, which is, you know, because of the CO2 being emitted into the air, it is raising the temperature of the, of what's going on in the atmosphere. So, and there's a big drive to try and reduce the amount of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere. So that is one of the major reasons why it's going on. Like I said, it depends on which end of the scale you want to look at of why that's going on.
I hate to say it, this is just one of those things that is like talking about this is like touching the third rail in on one of those things is that it, it invokes a lot of emotion in a lot of different people.
So I, I think another reason just to go off a little bit, another reason I think people are decarbonization. There is the, there are two types of, of decarbonization versus the embodied carbon. And then there is the operational carbon. And operational carbon is what I do try to do a lot of, to reduce it, which is reducing the energy consumption in buildings. But then, but that's not only limited to that when you start looking at embodied carbon. Embodied carbon, when you look at it over a, a 30 year period, you know the, the, you have to look at where that embodied carbon comes from. It comes from, you know, almost cradle to construction site, right. So you have to produce the material, then you have to ship the material wherever it is, whether it's done by ship or train or attract a trailer. But each of them are emitting CO2 trying to get it there. Sometimes making the material is emitting CO2. Then when you get to the construction site, you're emitting CO2, whether it's with the cranes, whether it's the dump trucks or, and all, all of that. So that is just to build the building. And then, then you have the operational carbon of when it's operating. You know, when the building, after it's post construction, it's operating.
And what, and then what else is, you know, any modifications in the building which is also some of that is embodied carbon.
Hope that makes a certain amount of sense of where I was going with this.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. It's a good just, you know, general overview. And so also the idea of decarbonization is one that is trying to create change. So what kinds of changes should owners make to reduce their carbon footprint?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Okay, if it's a brand new building, right. You have to look at it from two different types. Some are existing, some are new. From a brand new building that, that is a holistic approach and everybody has to be on board, whether it's the architect, structural engineer, mechanical engineer. And you say like what is, what does that mean? Well, you know, one of the things is like have they have a tendency to want to put, the architects want to have a tendency to put the heaviest equipment mechanically on the roof of the building. Well, when you do that was forgetting about that it has different costs associated with it. It has one cost which affects the embodied carbon is which it makes the building heavier in a sense that the structural system for the building has to be beefed up to handle it. Another thing that could be done is the architects. While I personally love glass buildings, I happen to be in one.
But they also have the cladding of the building also contributes to the overall carbon. So reducing the amount of windows. And then last but not least is me as the mechanical engineer arguing that we should put things on the ground and trying to make the building as efficient as humanly possible for the type of project it is. And, and, and what has to happen with that is the owner has to believe in all of those things to go along to make that happen.
Then if it's an existing building, well there we have a little bit different because the building is already there. But the, but the embodied carbon is now all been taken care of. Right. The building's already built and all you're doing is modifying a building that's 20, 30, 50 years old.
And again now you want to look at how do you make it more energy efficient. Go with the most efficient systems, more insulation reduced. But the, but very best lighting on watts per square foot. But beginning as lower as you can.
And, and that is the I think the simple way to be able to handle a change to reduce the overall building carbon footprint.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: Great. And you touched on this just a little bit in your answer before. But what are some reasons that an owner wouldn't move to reduce their carbon footprint?
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Well, one of the things that we see that happens a lot is sometimes the reduced carbon footprint comes with a higher construction cost tag.
And if you say what do you mean by that? Well, real simple is that sometimes going with more energy efficient systems, while it may reduce their energy bill long term, they're looking at first cost. Does the performer on the building work? You may have a developer that's going to build a building and he's only going to keep the building three to five years before he flips it.
So it's, there is no advantage to him or her to make the most efficient building unless they're in that market and that's the type of clientele that they're going to be trying to sell to to market the building to. So the type of building that they're selling is what someone is going to want to pay that more premium dollar for for that type of a project.
That answers your question.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely answers the question. Is that a similar reason for engineers designing the building to not move towards reducing the footprint just based on what the owners want?
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Well, I hate to say this but you get, I think we, we've found two types. There are two types of engineers.
I will speak on the MEP side.
There are some that have energy conservation is deep in their DNA for the lack of a better term.
Right. For me, I try to fight all the time to make the building the most efficient. We could make it at the most reasonable dollar cost. Right.
But then again, some engineers, I'm not saying they don't care about the environment. I'm not trying to paint a broad brush here, I'm just stating that I've worked with some engineers, they couldn't spell sustainability if Their life depended on it.
But that doesn't mean they're bad engineers. That doesn't mean they do a bad job. But they're not looking at it from if I did this versus that this would save a ton more energy. I think that trend is changing only because the younger people that are getting involved in our industry are seeing the value of reducing energy, reducing consumption in a building. Because you know, there's. Because until we figure out a way to move away from fossil fuels because it's not going to happen overnight in my opinion, regardless of what anybody says, it's going to be a slow, arduous path to get there. But we can get there. But it's going to take time. But until we get there, let's do the most efficient thing that we can do until we get there and then keep continuously improve on it.
So you know, that's like to me is, you know, why some people don't do it. I hope that clarified everything for you.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it definitely did. And I'm glad that you're touching on fossil fuels. That leads in a little bit to my next question. So is there some kind of measured approach to moving away from natural gas or fossil fuels or is this more of an all or nothing kind of initiative?
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Well, yeah, if you remember young lady, a little while ago when I talked about you said that this is like touching the third rail.
That's another one of those topics that right now people have that there are some, you know, in my opinion, I'm not going to talk about politics or being political about it, but politics plays into it. People say we gotta remove, get rid of gas stoves and do all of this and all of that works.
If our, if our national grid was set up to handle all of this and currently it's not. Regardless what anybody in wants to think. There was an article that I had read, I think it was in the state of Georgia and I could be off by this. So I don't want anybody going in and, and, and Google what I said and I said a certain percentage and I was off by a few percentage. But the, the state of Georgia, who is like many states that are trying to attract a lot of technology companies there, finding that they're going to be short. I remember somewhere around 13 to 17% on their grid. Now I could be off by that. It could have been 10% but it's still a number that is not easily, you know, like overnight to fix to be able to upgrade a grid to handle it.
If you start adding people going to electric cars and so on. The grid is already super taxed. It is an older grid that needs to be updated over time and, and all that is going to happen over time. So there has to be, I believe there has to be a measured approach to whether you're going to read any type of fossil fuel, not only natural gas, whether it's coal. I'm, I'm not saying that we should continue to burn coal. I'm just saying that we have to have a natural progression to start phasing things out and having something to take its place. To just phase something out and have nothing that is to take its place is, is, is a recipe for disaster. In, in my humble opinion.
I, but I know this is, this is the greatest country on earth. We will figure it out, put the brightest minds to it, it will able and we will able to fix this problem and work our way through it. And I feel that wholeheartedly.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I think that's a good sentiment to end on. More, these are all of my more technical questions. Do you have anything else that you feel like you didn't touch on that you wanted to speak on?
[00:13:35] Speaker B: I just think that, you know, decarbonization, it's kind of funny. I've. I've done a few different things in my original PowerPoint that I did for the AIA going back a few years was decarbonization for dummies.
And when I was asked to do it, I was putting it together and I realized I was one of the dummies because I really didn't understand.
And what I mean by that is I understood what I was calling reducing energy as operational carbon. And Even that's not 100% correct, but for the most part.
But then when I started talking to my peers in my industry, I started finding out that I was not alone in not understanding about the differences between environmental, between in body carbon or operational carbon. So I think that there is a lot more education that people should become up to speed. I'm not saying that you have go out and be the, you know, live or die by what you're going to do here, but I think understanding and have a good sense of what decarbonization is and, and be able to help motor that and move that along in your own little way.
It's funny though that when I've been involved in projects like a performing arts center and then one of the things that the local mayor had talked about was trying to make the building carbon neutral and when they posed that to me, I said to them, I said, okay, are we just going to try and make the building itself carbon neutral based on the energy consumption and so on? And they were asking the question, why do I say that? Why did I ask that question? I said, well, real simple. If you go by the true thing of a carbon footprint, especially for a performing arts center, you have many of them. You have, let alone the people that work there, how they get back and forth to the building, their carbon footprint.
You now have different plays and shows that come in. Well, where did those plays and shows come from? A lot of them come from New York.
Right. And so if they're coming from New York, they're coming on the. The.
The props and everything are traveling by, usually by track trailer. So now you have to figure in the carbon footprint of all those tractor trailers from the last stop or wherever the last show was to their stop to this venue.
Then you got to look at how all the actors and actresses are getting here. Are they by train, plane, automobile, however. Truly. And you got to factor that in. And then you got to look at all the guests that are coming to have this experience.
Some fly in just to see shows here. So you got to look at it. And I go. Once you start to figure that out, it becomes a daunting, insurmountable task that is hard to do. So that's why I think that people have to look at these more logically and. And attack them. The old saying is, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? I think that's the way you have to solve these problems.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense to me. I do have one more, less technical question for you about decarbonization. You touched on this just a little bit in your past answer. But we talked before about how teaching and sharing your knowledge is really important to you. And can you just kind of tell me a little bit more about that?
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Sure.
You know, it's kind of funny. I've. Throughout my life, I've always had good mentors and, you know, and they taught me.
And there was a. I don't know if anybody who's listening would remember Rush Limbaugh. Whether you liked him or not was immativo. Even I wasn't crazy about him sometimes. But he said something that was very profound, at least in. In my humble opinion. He said that his intelligence was on loan from God.
And I thought that was very profound. And in which. If you gotta. If you. If you believe in a higher being, you have to believe that that's true, and I do.
So it's been my mission now for many, many, many years now that to teach and, and the next generation and, or anybody. It's not just have to be the next generation to teach the next generation of people.
All that I know I want to give it all away before, before I have to give it back is the way I look at it. And it's been very successful. I've been fortunate in my career and in my life that I take mentorship as much as, as an important thing is I take leadership.
Leadership is a gift. Teaching somebody is a gift. Enhancing a young mind to excel beyond their beliefs and in, in, in invigorating them and endorsing them and giving them, you know, like a place to soar and, and fly is, is so rewarding. And yeah, while I like playing the guitar and I like writing, like, you know, just writing, writing, that is probably one of my greatest things that I enjoy the most.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate you coming here and teaching us a little bit about decarbonization, so thank you for that and thank you for your time.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Thank you. Great. And to our audience, for more information on decarbonization or commissioning buildings, you can check out articles, videos and other podcast episodes from Consulting specifying
[email protected]. thank you so much for listening and we'll talk next time.
