Reducing the impacts of urban heat islands can provide energy efficiency and resilience benefits. Roof replacements can contribute to passive survivability, reducing the impacts of extreme heat at both the community and the building level.
Financing Mitigation Activities
These are just a few strategies that can be deployed during retrofit projects that capture co-benefits of enhanced resilience and energy savings. Despite these benefits, securing internal funding for disaster mitigation and energy-efficiency improvements may be challenging.
Recognizing the benefits mitigation measures provide to building owners and communities, many Property Assessed Clean Energy (or now more appropriately called Property Assessed Capital Expenditure) programs are starting to include mitigation as an eligible PACE project. PACE programs in California support seismic retrofits that can be done alongside or independent of energy- and water-efficiency improvements. Florida PACE programs allow hurricane mitigation measures. Other states are beginning to follow suit. At a community level, a recent study found that avoided property damage from hurricanes due to the Florida PACE program topped $507 million. [Read “Impacts of the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Program on the Economies of California and Florida”, published by the Sol Price School of Public Policy.]
The Washington-based U.S. Department of Energy offers a toolkit on Commercial-PACE for resilience, including case studies. One case study covers the retrofit of the Southern Oaks Rehab and Nursing Center in Pensacola, Fla. Southern Oaks partnered with Counterpointe SRE to secure a $500,000 PACE deal, which paid for a full retrofit of the building’s windows and roof. The installed windows are rated to withstand winds of up to 200 mph and have a low-e/ argon glazing U-value of .28. The low U- value windows provide greater resistance to heat flow, resulting in cooler interior temper- atures and less demand from cooling units.
Resilience Does Pay Off
The growing threat of disaster is placing increased pressure on communities and building owners to be prepared to weather the storm. Fortunately, there are measures building owners can take to reduce the risk to their facility while also capturing ongoing benefits through reduced energy costs. Later this year, the National Institute of Building Sciences, Washington, will release the next edition of its widely cited “Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves” study—this time with an examination of the benefits associated with building retrofits. Quantifying these benefits will hopefully provide additional justification for investing in retrofits that capture both energy and resilience benefits.
Who Is ANCR?
The Washington, D.C.-based ALLIANCE FOR NATIONAL & COMMUNITY RESILIENCE is developing the tools to assist communities in evaluating and improving their resilience. Founded by the International Code Council, U.S. Resiliency Council and the Meridian Institute, ANCR is a 501(c)(3) national coalition of public- and private-sector stakeholders working to advance community resilience.