February 15-18, 2009 Washington State Convention Center Seattle ...

ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY USE REDUCTION IN AQUACULTURE
OPERATIONS AND SUPPORT BUILDINGS
Michael Hatten, P.E.
Solarc Architecture and Engineering, Inc.
Eugene, OR 97401 USA
mikeh@solarc-ae.net
Energy use associated with buildings accounts for 48% of the total energy use in the United State. Many greenhouse gas
reduction initiatives have focused on reducing the energy use requirements of buildings. In the commercial building sector,
this focus has been primarily on opportunities to design and construct new highly efficient buildings that exceed applicable
state and national energy standards. In the industrial sector, the focus has been on upgrade and improvement to existing infrastructure.
Aquaculture operations and support buildings offer opportunities for both efforts – new construction and existing
building system upgrade.
Energy efficiency in new design and construction offers the opportunity to cost-effectively exceed applicable energy standards
by 20% to 50% on the basis of avoided utility costs alone. Consideration of future economic value of avoided emissions is
likely to increase the cost-effectiveness threshold significantly. The State of Oregon’s State Energy Efficient Design (SEED)
program requires all state projects to exceed the energy code by at least 20%. This involves direct involvement with the design
of the project, so that energy efficiency options can be identified for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, water heating
and miscellaneous electric loads. Involvement at the early design stages is emphasized. Energy modeling and life cycle cost
analysis is required. The Oregon Hatchery Research Center located in Western Oregon is a good example. The research building
meets the SEED criterion using an integrated set of energy strategies including daylight harvesting, additional insulation,
high performance windows, high efficiency potable water heating, and heat recovery.
Energy use reduction in existing buildings requires additional effort to identify and analyze opportunities. Existing building
systems can be upgraded to newer technology that results in markedly reduced energy consumption often with overall improvement
in system performance. Lighting technology, for example, has advanced to the point where linear fluorescent light
sources perform much better in high bay applications than conventional high intensity discharge (HID) point sources such as
metal halide. Warehouses, storage bays, and covered outdoor canopies that are currently lit with HID can be retrofit with T8 or
T5 linear fluorescent sources and controlled with occupancy sensors. The resulting energy use reduction can be 50% or greater.
The resulting greenhouse gas reductions can also be significant, especially in geographical areas that have a coal-dominated
generation portfolio. Many existing buildings offer energy use reduction opportunities that have little or no capital cost. These
opportunities are associated with operations and maintenance improvements – adjusting temperature setpoints, tuning operating
schedules, optimizing ventilation rates, and fixing broken equipment. Experience with building operations initiatives in the
Pacific Northwest over the past 3 years suggests that buildings can typically reduce energy use by 10 to 15% through straightforward
tune-ups of building energy using systems.
The combination of efficient new construction, cost-effective energy retrofit, and comprehensive building tune-ups offer the
opportunity to reduce energy use in aquaculture operations and support buildings by up to 50%. Harvesting this opportunity
will be an important part of an overall effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with aquaculture operations nationally
and world-wide.
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