Construction Firm Presents 2014 Green Building Outlook

SEATTLE — Hammer & Hand, a construction firm with offices in Seattle and Portland, Ore., published 10 predictions of high performance buildings in 2014.

Sam Hagerman, former Hammer & Hand president, along with Dan Whitmore and Skylar Swinford co-authored the predictions for high performance green building trends in the coming year. Hagerman and Whitmore are board members of Passive House Alliance U.S., an organization that trains building professionals on the Passive House Standard, and Swinford is a high performance building consultant with the organization.

“We’re fortunate to have our feet in two spheres of the high performance building industry, that of policy and of practice,” Hagerman said in a statement. “And we see exciting developments coming in 2014.”

Below are the 10 predictions for high performance building in 2014:

1. Focus will move beyond net-zero energy to net-positive energy buildings.
The falling prices of photovoltaic panels, increasing viability and availability of electric vehicles and market mechanisms to reward both onsite energy conservation and production, will help make this move.

2. Market mechanisms that reward energy conservation and renewable energy production will flourish. Market-based tools will increase in popularity in 2014.

3. Building energy codes will move away from perspective rules toward performance-based measures. With municipalities and states starting to take notice of performance-based measures, more and more policy makers will note its benefits.

4. Carbon dioxide heat pumps will help transform heating and cooling performances. The heat pumps are more earth-friendly, more energy-efficient and work better in colder climates.

5. U.S.-made high performance windows will continue to make high performance building easier here. With more domestic window manufacturers, price as well as quality will continue to improve.

6. Builders and designer of high performance homes will design ventilation systems with focus on quality of ventilation rather than just quantity. The movement to understand the importance for ventilation quality will create better ventilation strategies and systems.

7. The U.S.-led move to make Passive House more climate-specific will improve performance at both micro and macro levels. In the past year, the Passive House Standard has been made more sensitive to the diverse climates of the U.S.

8. Passive House competition will result in better software tools for high performance building practitioners. The competition between the organization U.S. chapter and German chapter will lead to innovation in high performance building.

9. Europe’s push to eliminate thermal bridges in building will make high performance building more mainstream in the U.S., too. The move in Europe to eliminate thermal bridges has spurred new software and improved high performance building, which may inspire the U.S. to take on the same goals.

10. China’s interest in high performance building will propel the U.S. market.
With the world’s second largest economy, China’s growing attentiveness to green building will have widespread impacts.