Zero-Over-Time Planning Template Draft

I think it's worth separating on-site vs off-site renewable energy.

Is ENERGY STAR certification still going to be required for new construction, under 5.1a, for compliance?

How are the Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 being defined, i.e., is Phase 1 the first 12 months of occupancy, Phase 2 the second 12 months, of occupancy,, etc.?

For buildings with any amount of common space, the primary way to get this number is through whole building energy modeling. Therefore filling this form out would require engaging an energy consultant to complete this service when it would otherwise not necessarily be required. Whole building energy modeling is a useful predictive tool, but if the intent of the standard is to make that a firm requirement, it should be broken out as a separate criteria.

Is the intent here to capture items that are all-electric from day one or could be electrified in the future? Or is to capture the impact of electrifying items during a retrofit? I think it could be impactful to have a team list the natural gas end uses in the building and their kBtu loads so as to demonstrate the percentage of the overall load that is natural gas vs. electric, but that would require reworking the form.

Emissions avoided are a complicated item to calculate and require defining a baseline to compare against. Are the emissions avoided here compared to a baseline code compliant design? Have we defined which grid emissions factor to use and how that you account for changing grid emissions over time?

I'm unsure how this table would be filled out as is and it may be helpful to better align this with industry practices around energy modeling. Typically energy modeling compares the projected design against a mandatory baseline (IECC or ASHRAE defined). The projected energy consumption can be broken down into subcomponents of energy usage (HVAC, DHW, lighting, plug loads). Items like the envelope or air sealing are components of the models, but they are not outputs from the model, that would show up in the HVAC loads. If a consultant were required to provide a report as back-up for this, I'm not entirely sure how they would break items down into the categories as shown.