Bruce Jacobs, PhD, PE, 2023-2024 BSCES Legislative Fellow
This has been an unconventional period of service for the BSCES Legislative Fellow. Rather than being posted to the Transportation Committee as had been the practice, I found a home in the office of Senator Cynthia Creem, last term's chairperson of the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change. As the name implies, the Committee is focused on mitigation of and adaptation to the impacts of climate change.
During my time as legislative fellow, I worked under the supervision of Garrett Casey, policy director and counsel to Senator Creem. Garrett's interest in the adoption of heat pumps was piqued by constituent letters pressing for adoption of a policy that would require property owners to install heat pumps when replacing their existing air conditioner units. Vancouver, in Canada, and California has recently adopted building code regulations imposing this type of requirement that the constituents had hoped could serve as a model for Massachusetts.
Heat pumps are devices that draw heat energy from the outside air — even on cold days — and transfer it to the interior of the building. The technology is essentially the same as a conventional air conditioner, which draws heat energy from the interior of the building and discharges it to the exterior. In fact, heat pumps can both heat homes in the winter and cool them in the winter. The advantage of a heat pump over a conventional gas furnace is that the process consumes less energy than heating air through combustion of oil or gas or heating of air with electrical coils. Also, heat pumps are electrical devices, so presuming that Massachusetts can get its act together, newly installed heat pumps will use electricity generated using renewable energy sources without emission of greenhouse gases. Homes that have air conditioners are good candidates for heat pumps because the ducts that distribute cooled air in the summer could be used to move hot air in the winter.
My assignment was to develop an understanding of the adopted regulations in California and Vancouver and the political and technical obstacles to their adoption. I also was tasked with collecting information on the technical issues related to the efficiency and cost effectiveness of heat pumps in cold climates. Staff from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources were recruited for a meeting in which they shared their knowledge on current policies that encourage the adoption of heat pumps, the relative successes of those programs, and advised as to the likely effectiveness of a mandate for representatives of the construction industry. The Board will advise on courses and certifications to advance knowledge within industry of measures to reduce embodied carbon, establish industrial best practices for life cycle analysis of buildings and reducing emissions from embodied carbon. The Board will also report back to the house and senate on “best policy mechanisms to measure, monitor, and reduce embodied carbon across all building types.” The Department of Energy Resources shall incorporate provisions relative to the measurement and reduction of embodied carbon into the stretch energy code of the Massachusetts building energy code. The stretch energy code is an optional amendment to the state building code that may be adopted by local communities at their discretion.
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