Building Performance and Decarbonization Planning Guide
Develop Your Decarbonization Plan
Decarbonization Planning Guide
What Components are Needed to Decarbonize
For long-term success, engaging professional services to support your plan is critical, especially while considering several elements at once. To start, your plan should assess existing building conditions and establish goals for your building. Decarbonization can take place all at once, in a partial fashion, or over time. While designing your plan, you should understand what is necessary to decarbonize in a cost-effective way.
Generally, components of a decarbonization plan require specific categories. These categories should be customized and rearranged for each building since each building is unique. The categories are listed below, in order, for a comprehensive approach.
Efficiency measures
Make sure your building is running properly. Install efficiency measures with short payback periods and tune equipment that is not working correctly.
Load reductions
Consider reducing energy loads and recover wasted heat so your building contains functions that enable electrification, such as smaller systems, increased comfort, and less strain on infrastructure.
Enabling activities & infrastructure readiness
Before replacing onsite combustion equipment with electrification options, review different types of infrastructure projects and studies to prepare your building.
Electrification of combustion systems
Research electrifying combustion systems for your building. Usually, heat pumps can meet building needs—however, the earlier steps should come first to reduce upfront and operation costs.
Renewable energy and storage
Consider renewable energy and battery storage for your electrified building. Typically, these systems provide long-term cost savings if you plan ahead with your new equipment.
The Resource Efficient Decarbonization Guide summarizes many of these elements. The figure below shows different decarbonization factors to consider for your building.
