Man­age­ment team: Har­ri­son Frak­er (Co-PI), Daniel Kam­men (PI), Antho­ny Nahas (Project Consultant)

Research Moti­va­tion

1. How to make mil­lions of old, inef­fi­cient homes part of a clean-air, low-car­bon & low resource-use future?
2. How can block-scale solu­tions enable bet­ter cli­mate-change adap­ta­tion & response strate­gies than indi­vid­ual, home solutions?
3. How do you get block-scale inhab­i­tant buy-in, and sup­port from util­i­ties, stage agen­cies and the clean­tech sector?

Hypoth­e­sis:

• The block-scale is con­sid­er­ably more effi­cient & cost-effec­tive than the indi­vid­ual house-scale in achiev­ing resource effi­cien­cies, and takes advan­tage of emerg­ing ener­gy gen­er­a­tion leg­is­la­tion and infor­ma­tion systems.

Pre­sump­tion:

• The block-scale aggre­gates the flows across mul­ti­ple units, enabling greater effi­cien­cies and economies of scale

EcoBlock Project:

• Test & bench­mark results in real-time, with true case-con­trol capac­i­ty via a sister-block.

Urban Block Re-Purposing

Design Objec­tive: Social & Tech­no­log­i­cal POV 

1. peo­ple + ener­gy + water + waste­water ==>       low­er­ing resource end-use in the built environment

1. design & imple­ment a pilot around neigh­bor­hood engagement
2. demon­strate effi­cient, func­tion­ing block-scale ener­gy, water & waste­water treat­ment-and-reuse plat­form & retro­fit process
3. pro­to­type & blue­print to repli­cate, improve & scale-up.

Design ele­ments for resource-use efficiencies: 

1. Block-scale retro­fit: opti­mized inte­gra­tion & operation
2. com­mu­nal solar & smart grid è elec­tric­i­ty, stor­age & EVs
3. com­mu­nal waste re-use è bio-methane for cook­ing load, irri­ga­tion & com­post for local, sus­tain­able food systems
4. Home-scale retro­fit: whole-house ener­gy + water solutions
5. weath­er­iza­tion, EE appli­ances + light­ing, smart controls
6. grey-water re-use + water-con­serv­ing fixtures
7. Insti­tu­tion­al path­ways: reg­u­la­to­ry maneu­ver­ing & financing

Urban Block Re-Purposing

Elec­tric­i­ty

Water

Fund­ing Needs

• $8M over two/​three years, from mul­ti­ple fund­ing sources (cor­po­rate, phil­an­thropic, etc.):

- Micro­grid + stor­age $1.5 mil­lion /​ Waste-water $.9 mil­lion /​ Water $.3 mil­lion /​ Contingency$.3 million

Moti­va­tions:

• Rad­i­cal­ly improve build­ing per­for­mance (energy+water) as urban adap­tive response to cli­mate change
• Social response & inte­gra­tion of community’s wishes
• Legal & reg­u­la­to­ry path­ways & advocacy
• Finan­cial inno­va­tions based on ‘avoid­ed costs’
• New ways to com­mer­cial­ize green water sys­tems, clean ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, microgrid–storage, DR, sys­tems con­trols, FDD, behav­ior ana­lyt­ics, etc.

Upcom­ing UCTV film to fea­ture the EcoBlock, with com­ments from:

Tim Schae­fer | Deputy Trea­sur­er, Pub­lic Finance | Office of Cal­i­for­nia State Trea­sur­er John Chi­ang |