OAA Webinar Series – TEUI 2.0: An OAA effort to bring clarity to energy and carbon metrics

Session Abstract:

Only an objective, backwards-looking performance evaluations can accurately show a building’s operational energy use, closing the so-called ‘performance-gap’ between modelled energy use (predicted or estimated) and actual performance. The OAA’s TEUI Calculator (v1.0) was exactly such an evaluation tool, which took energy supplied by source, and divided this by conditioned area to derive a Total Energy Use Intensity metric, in kWh/m2/yr units. This also allowed the calculation of operational emissions carbon intensity in GHGI in the units kgCO2e/m2/yr. But members asked for more features, such as some capacity to add embodied carbon, building statistics, Air Quality attributes, and some way to evaluate a proposed building against Building Code compliance requirements. The TEUI 2.0 calculator is an effort to integrate this feedback, while keeping the interface and outputs as simple and easy to understand as possible. The 2.0 version is imagined as a design tool, that allows a user to observe instant feedback between building surfaces and U-values and carbon emissions, together with a draft method of TEDI evaluation (Thermal Energy Demand Intensity in kWh/m2/yr). The ultimate goal is to develop a final iteration, TEUI 3.0 into a Code Compliance and submission tool, comparing the building as designed against the new tiered energy step codes per NECB2020 and NBC 2020 and their ultimate Provincially-adopted equivalents.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the difference between Energy use as modelled in a reference scenario vs. actual energy performance.
• Understand KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) used to define buildings with respect to operational and embedded carbon and energy.
• Understand additional Air Quality, Water and Offset methodologies.
• Understand how to use TEUI 2.0 as both a code compliance and submission as well as a design tool and see how others are using this in permit applications.

About the speaker:

Andy Thomson has been a green builder, designer, researcher, writer and outdoor-enthusiast for over 24 years before becoming a licensed architect (OAA) in 2016. A graduate architect from UBC’s M.Arch program, practicing Architecture as an Intern Architect since 2003, Andy started Thomson Architecture, Inc., in 2018 as a research-based firm offering advanced ecological, prefab and BIM design services to larger architecture firms on complex, high-performance and research-oriented projects in Canada, the USA and the EU. As a founding member of Toronto Metropolitan University’s ‘Green Architecture Co-Op’ in 1994, and current member of the Ontario Association of Architects’ Sustainable Built Environment Advisory, Andy has a long-standing commitment to advancing his profession with ever more efficient, smart and progressive designs. Andy is engaged in local and international public speaking engagements (RAIC and OAA Conferences, UofT) to promote low cost, high-performance and ecological design at home and abroad.