City Council Slated to Hear Update on Ways to Promote ‘Green’ Building in Malibu

• Fast-Tracking Might Be an Option

BY BILL KOENEKER

Should “green” building projects be fast-tracked by Malibu city officials?

Should the municipality have its own local energy efficiency standard?

Those are some of the questions the Malibu City Council is poised to discuss at its meeting next week, when it will be given an update on the  state of the municipal green building program.

The council will also be told about the new mandatory state green building standards.

Planners are seeking council concurrence about establishing a pilot incentive program that would fast-track exemplary green building projects through the coastal development permit review process.

The mandatory program created by the state called CALgreen includes residential and non-residential standards that address indoor water use, indoor enviromental quality and construction and demolition waste, among other requirements.

 “The CALgreen requirements do not, however, establish a mandatory level of energy efficiency that exceeds current building standards,” wrote the city’s senior planner Bonnie Blue.

“To address the city’s interest in greater energy efficiency, staff began working to develop a local energy efficiency standard. This type of standard is most appropriately adopted into the building code.”

Blue noted for Malibu that minimizing the energy consumption of buildings has the potential to address numerous goals, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with operating buildings, minimizing the effects of development on climate change, lowering a building’s energy bills, and contributing to compliance with state goals.

To accommodate Malibu’s many microclimates, a modeling and technical analysis was completed, then seven different house sizes from 3000 square feet to 11,172 sq. ft. were used for the modeling.

Other key factors were used, such as assuming that there are significant amounts of south-facing window area, which greatly affects energy demand.

“The results of the modeling analysis indicated that typical new residences of up to 5499 sq. ft. can be designed to exceed the energy code by 15 percent with minimum alterations,” wrote Blue. “Due to inherently greater energy use normally associated with larger homes, the flat 15 percent efficiency target was determined to be insufficient to achieve a meaningful reduction. Therefore a progressive standard was employed whereby larger-than-average new residences would be designed to consume no more energy than a ‘typical’ new Malibu home that is performing 15 percent better than the energy code,”  added Blue.

The concept involves applying the “energy budget” of the typical home to the larger home, so that the larger home would need to use less energy per square foot than the typical home in order to keep its energy demand the same despite its greater square footage, according to Blue, who noted that approach is what has been done in Marin County for the past three years.

Planners indicate that they used recent new home permits from the city and found that the ‘typical’ new Malibu home size is 5499 sq. ft.

Blue insisted the results of the analysis “demonstrate that even though very large houses (ie. 10,000 sq. ft. or greater) would need to achieve efficiencies nearing 30 percent better than the energy code, or baseline, the implications on design and cost continue to remain relatively minor.  The efficiencies can be achieved using off-the shelf technologies such as tankless water heaters, more efficient windows and additional field testing of ducts, air conditioning and insulation installations.

“No major changes to the design of the buildings, including the assumptions on glazing percentage, building orientation or height are needed to meet the energy target,”  Blue concluded.

The idea of fast tracking green building projects was expressed by council members, planning commissioners and applicants as a green incentive.

Blue indicated that there are numerous challenges to such an approach citing the level of detail required in the permit, limited staff resources, time required to process such permits and ensuring projects are built as proposed after the fast-track incentive has been provided.

Planners are suggesting a pilot program might address those concerns because there would be a limited number of applicants over a trial period.

“The program could be launched at any time by inviting applicants proposing green projects to participate,” added Blue. “If the pilot program proves to be feasible and effective, it could be opened to more projects.”