Sustainability   

The project will be required to follow Needham Bylaw Section 3.11 Municipal Opt-in Specialized Stretch Energy Code. All compliance pathways under the Specialized Code are designed to ensure that new construction is consistent with Massachusetts’ and the Town of Needham’s Climate Action Roadmap’s net-zero emissions by 2050 goals, primarily through a combination of energy efficiency (which enables reduced heating loads) and efficient electrification. The project will require an all-electric building or the installation of solar to offset fossil fuel used on-site.

The benefits of incorporating sustainable design features are wide-ranging and include:

• Reduced operating costs: Features such as solar arrays and geothermal would dramatically lower utility costs for the building.

• Reduced construction costs: With rebates from MSBA, Eversource, and federal programs, the Town will be eligible for incentives to help cover construction costs.

• Safe, healthy, clean environment for students and staff: By minimizing the use of fossil fuels on the site, there will be fewer pollutants, toxins, viruses, and allergens present in the building.

• Reduced greenhouse gas emissions: Converting to an all-electric building would eliminate the carbon footprint of what is currently the Town’s second most energy-intensive building.

In June 2024, the Select Board adopted Sustainable Needham, Needham’s first-ever Climate Action Roadmap. The Roadmap serves as a strategic plan to achieve a more sustainable future in Needham. The Roadmap was developed under the leadership of Needham’s Climate Action Plan Committee, which was chartered by the Select Board in 2022 to make recommendations for developing a plan that meets or exceeds the state’s climate mitigation and resilience goals. With the adoption of the Roadmap, the Climate Action Plan Committee, having met their charter goals, dissolved. In their place, the Select Board chartered the Climate Action Committee in 2024 to advise the Select Board in the implementation of policies and practices to achieve the objectives of the Town’s Climate Action Roadmap and to support the state’s attainment of 2050 net zero goals. 

The Climate Action Roadmap includes six key focus areas for goals, strategies, and actions: clean energy, governance, natural resources and waste, net zero buildings, resilience and public health, and transportation. You can review the Town’s Climate Action Roadmap on the Town Sustainability webpage or by clicking this link. 

The Climate Action Roadmap includes goals, strategies, and actions that apply townwide rather than focusing on individual buildings. However, it is important to note that the Roadmap identifies several overarching goals which should be taken into consideration with the Pollard project. These include: 

• Goal EN.1 Needham achieves 100% renewable energy by 2050.

• Goal EN.2 Needham has a resilient energy infrastructure and supply.

• Goal BU.1 Buildings in Needham are designed, constructed, and maintained to be energy efficient and minimize greenhouse gas emissions. 

• Goal NA.1 Public and private landscapes are designed to be climate resilient, manage stormwater, maximize tree canopy, and promote community resilience and carbon sequestration.

• Goal GO.2 Needham’s municipal operations reflect sustainability and resiliency principles.

• Goal RE.1 Needham’s infrastructure and services are equipped to respond to climate hazards.

Needham voted to adopt the Massachusetts Specialized Energy Code during Special Town Meeting on October 30, 2023 and the Specialized Code took effect on July 1, 2024. The Specialized Code was developed in 2022, following direction from the Commonwealth’s Climate Act of 2021, to develop a municipal opt-in code that advanced net-zero building performance. The Specialized Code builds on the efficiency and clean energy standards in the updated Stretch Energy Code and pushes new construction towards deep energy efficiency, reduced heating loads, and efficient electrification. 

The Specialized Code requires commercial construction, like this project, to be all-electric or if using fossil fuel combustion systems, provide pre-wiring for future appliances and HVAC electrification, and install enough solar to offset fossil fuel use. 

Ground-source heat pump (GSHP) (also known as geo-exchange or geothermal) systems pair heat pumps located either inside or on the building with a ground loop of horizontal and vertical piping (wells). The connection with the ground allows for heat transfer, which can be more energy efficient than exchanging with the air (air-source heat pumps) because of the relatively constant temperatures of the earth. Heat pumps can heat and cool spaces, and when included with hot water heaters, can also provide domestic hot water to plumbing fixtures. 

GSHPs are all-electric systems that run at a very high efficiency. The coefficient of performance is the ratio of useful heat movement per work input, or in other words, the ratio of the energy output of the heat pump to the electrical input it requires to run. For GSHP systems, this ranges between 3.5 to 5.0. In comparison, air-source heat pumps range between 2.0 and 4.0, and high-efficiency natural gas boilers range between 0.7 and 0.9. There are no combustion emissions on site associated with GSHPs systems and they can operate at quieter acoustic levels.

GSHP systems leverage the ground’s relatively stable temperature to provide heating and cooling to a building by circulating a fluid through a network of boreholes, efficiently moving heat. In heating mode, GSHP systems extract heat from the ground, use heat pumps to increase the circulating fluid temperature, and release the heat into the desired space. In cooling mode, these heat pumps absorb heat from the space to be cooled, use heat pumps to transfer that heat energy to the circulating fluid and release it into the geologic formation surrounding the network of boreholes. Heat is drawn from the ground during the winter and injected into the ground during the summer. A GSHP system will produce more heat energy than it consumes in the electrical energy it uses to run the pumps. 

Yes. The Public Services Administration Building (PSAB) utilizes a ground-source heat pump system to heat and cool the building. Constructed in 2011, PSAB has sixteen 500-foot wells drilled under the parking lot for the building which serves as a heat sink. Heat is transferred to and from the building in a loop via a water-to-water heat exchanger and then water to air heat pumps use a refrigerant cycle to either add or reject the room heat. PSAB has consistently remained the Town’s most energy efficient building regarding Energy Use Intensity (EUI), a measure of the building’s energy efficiency which is calculated by dividing a building’s annual energy consumption by gross floor area. Over the past decade , PSAB’s EUI has held constant at approximately 30 kBtu/sf. With limited mechanical components for the ground source heat pumps, maintenance has been minimal for the system and streamlined when required. 

The Jack Cogswell Building Fleet Maintenance addition that is currently underway will also use ground-source heat pumps to heat and cool the building.

Typically, well designed buildings that integrate sustainable strategies early in the design process save money over time. When systems are considered as a whole – how they interact with each other – their efficiencies can compound for less initial cost and lower operational costs. System choices can be complex, and it requires effort throughout the design process for the owner and design team to continue to make refinements for greater impacts. Adding sustainable features late in design typically results in higher costs because it could be too late to properly evaluate the potential synergies and efficiencies each feature contributes to the whole. And instead of the strategies magnifying efficiencies (e.g., reducing sizes of complementary systems), they might layer proportionally higher costs relative to any potential efficiency improvements. Deleting features late in design should be weighed against the potential impacts to long-term operation efficiencies and maintenance requirements (e.g., removing something may increase operational costs or require increasing the capacity of other systems to compensate for the removal). 

In addition to considering the construction and operation costs, there continue to be financial incentives to incorporate sustainable features, especially for those features that improve energy performance and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These incentives include both state (MassSave) rebate programs and federal (tax credits), which can be significant, and potentially grants from a variety of sources. In addition to these programs, the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) incentivizes projects that obtain third-party green building certification. This is a requirement for their base funding levels. The agency offers additional funds (3%) based on meeting energy efficiencies that include complying with the State’s Opt-in Specialized Stretch Energy Code requirements; and additional funds for projects that achieve points in credits from the green building rating system related to integrating healthier materials and improved indoor environmental air quality (1%).

The new school is being planned and designed to include solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to help offset the energy consumption of the new school building, with the goal for the building to be net-zero. The benefit of incorporating renewable energy production is that it will save operating costs by offsetting energy costs every year that the PV system is in service. Eventually, this offset will pay for the system and continue as net-income to the Town. It also utilizes energy for the building that is free of associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. When paired with battery systems, there is potential to further reduce costs associated with demand charges from the utility during high-demand periods for electricity. Also, when paired with batteries, this system increases the resiliency of the building during power outages in conjunction with the use of a back-up generator.

Solar panels were installed on the roof of the Sunita Williams Elementary School. These solar panels provide about 40% of the building’s electricity use. Furthermore, over the system’s projected 30-year lifespan, the panels are anticipated to save the Town almost $900,000 in energy costs. Solar panels are also planned for the Jack Cogswell Building and the new Fleet Maintenance addition that is currently under construction.

Net-zero buildings reduce GHG emissions by utilizing renewable energy or by purchasing offset equivalents to what is consumed, negating any emissions associated with the power consumption needs for the building over the course of a year. There may be moments in time when the building is still consuming more power than is being produced; but the cumulative impact over the course of the year balances out to be equal or greater power production relative to consumption. The first step is to design  the most energy efficient building, which reduces power demand. This includes designing energy efficient walls, roofs, window and lighting systems. This helps reduce the operational cost of energy during each year over the life of the building.

Achieving a net-zero building would align with the following Climate Action Roadmap goals:

• Goal EN.1 Needham achieves 100% renewable energy by 2050.

• Goal EN.2 Needham has a resilient energy infrastructure and supply.

• Goal BU.1 Buildings in Needham are designed, constructed, and maintained to be energy efficient and minimize greenhouse gas emissions. 

• Goal GO.2 Needham’s municipal operations reflect sustainability and resiliency principles.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is one of the most widely used green building rating systems. The Pollard project will be designed with a minimum LEED Silver rating to satisfy MSBA requirements to receive funding. Meeting higher thresholds would result in higher funding awards above base MSBA levels. The Sunita Williams Elementary School and Needham Public Library have both earned LEED Silver Certification.