For this Salt Lake City building, energy efficiency, decarbonization are essential to function

When they’re out of the office, the Utah Clean Energy staff is often found in energy hearings, discussing policy with Utah leaders and advocating for more sustainable solutions to power the state. At their headquarters, on a small scale, they show how it’s done.

With the Climate Innovation Center, inaugurated in Salt Lake City last summer, the nonprofit not only searched for a facility that reflected its decarbonization efforts, but one that would create “a teaching tool and living laboratory,” inviting Utahns to watch the workings of a real-life, ultra-efficient, zero-emissions building.

After receiving many industry professionals to showcase the two-story building, with its extensive solar panels and a room with a battery to make intermittent energy available day and night, the organization opened its doors for the first time to the public for an open house on Friday.

“The building is meant to be a model of how we can eliminate emissions from operating the building,” Kevin Emerson, director of building efficiency and decarbonization at Utah Clean Energy said on Friday. “So there’s zero emissions that come from running the building. It’s all electric and all solar powered.”

Not only does the center produce enough energy to power its operations and even electric vehicles in its parking lot with about 39 kilowatts of solar capacity, but it has the ability to help utilities optimize their operations with a 90 kilowatt hours capacity battery. 

That battery, sitting in a small room alongside a heat pump water heater, is part of Rocky Mountain Power’s Wattsmart batteries program, which pays users to incorporate their energy storage into the utility’s smart power grid.

“We think it’s important for our building to be kind of a flexible, interactive, kind of extension of the grid,” Emerson said. “And because ultimately, we want that to be a standard practice, where batteries are located across the electric grid to incorporate more effectively all the renewable energy that you will keep adding.”

Additionally, there’s no gas combustion in the premises. All water features use conservation systems and even the washer and dryer machine installed in the janitor’s closet uses a heat pump.

Outside, the small garden in the facade is highly drought tolerant, full of native and pollinator-friendly plants, as well.

Buildings play a big role in carbon emissions, Emerson told the group of climate and technology enthusiasts who showed up for the tour. According to the environmental nonprofit Architecture 2030, about 40% of carbon emissions come from built environments, either from its operations, or the pollution brought by construction activity itself, including mining, extraction, transportation and manufacturing materials. 

That’s why, Emerson said, during the construction process, the team meticulously chose materials with smaller carbon footprints — from the carpets to the countertops and tiles. 

Embarking in this project saved emissions by opting to preserve many of the features of the building that sat in the lot prior to the nonprofit’s arrival — and also, the staff repurposed wood pieces from the organization’s previous headquarters for this building. 

A lot of the center’s energy efficiency comes from its insulation, as well, with contractors paying special attention to a correct airtight construction, Emerson said. Another team also supervised the space’s variable refrigerant flow heat pump, essentially a mechanical system that works like a large air conditioning unit that can provide cooling when it’s warm, and work in reverse to extract warmth out of the air, even on cold winter days.

The organization’s next step is to document all of these features by pursuing third-party certifications for the building, including a zero energy validation, focusing on the emissions it is not producing, and a zero carbon one to certify the materials used in retrofitting the space.

All of those lessons learned while designing and executing the building were included into climateinnovationcenter.org, a website, so others can incorporate non-polluting practices in new constructions or renovations. 

“One of the goals that Utah Clean Energy has is to help all the folks involved in construction across the state realize that building zero emissions as a standard practice is possible,” Emerson added. “And that’s our vision, is that zero emission buildings become a standard practice here in Utah that supports energy affordability.”

Hopefully, he said, more buildings become a big part of solutions for climate and better air quality days in Utah.