Here is the text version of the webinar U.S. DOE Zero Energy Ready Home and the California Advanced Home Program, presented in October 2016. Watch the presentation.
Nic Dunfee:
First presentation slide:
My name's Nic, and I'm with TRC Solutions. And I'm here today to talk to you about the California Advanced Homes Program and the update to the 2017 program. And this is for single-family homes only. Multifamily homes, we're currently in the development of the program. We'll have some details about that toward the end of the year, hopefully. So for now, this is just single-family homes that will be permitted to the 2016 code.
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So at TRC we are responsible for -- we are helping to develop the program for the statewide California Advanced Homes, and we are the implementer for the Pacific Gas and Electric territory. And the program's funded by the California utility customers, and it's administered by PG and E through the California Public Utilities Commission. Next slide.
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So just a quick overview of what I'll be covering today. Program updates and overview. I'll be talking about the Energy Design Rating. The splitting of the program between coastal and inland climate zones. And then the part everybody wants to hear about, the program kickers, program eligibility and incentives, and implementation details. Next slide.
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So the program overview. The program is in support of the CPUC's goals, and we are supporting the 2020 net-zero energy goals for the new residential construction in the state of California. We offer financial incentives for design and design assistance to facilitate energy-efficient construction, and as I said, the program is funded through the CPUC. And the program may be revised at any time at their discretion. Next slide.
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So overview of the updates to the program. The important thing, we'll be operating under the same structure as the 2013 code cycle. So while you're learning the new code, you won't have to learn any new processes with us, as far as the application goes or the actual structure of the program. We're moving toward supporting more of the zero net energy, as defined by Title 24 and the CEC's goals. We're switching from the CAHP score to the Energy Design Rating, which I'll get into that a little bit more in a moment. We're using different entry scores for coastal and inland climates. And we're updating the kicker options, and as I said before, this is at the 2016 code permitted homes. So those are any homes that you're applying for permits after January 1 of 2017. Next slide. ... Next slide.
Jamie Lyons:
We're working on it, Nic. Has it updated yet for you?
Nic Dunfee:
No, it hasn't.
Jamie Lyons:
How about now?
Nic Dunfee:
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There it is. OK, so those 2017 redesign goals, is we're really wanting to focus on that 2020 zero net energy goal. And being an efficiency program, we focus on efficiency first and then we offer kickers on top of the efficiency. But you have to meet our efficiency standards first before we take any sort of generation into account. We're going to continue using a whole-house efficiency metric. In this case, we're going to be switching to an EDR score. And we're going to emphasize and support challenging measures such as high-performance attics, high-performance walls. We're going to start including non-regulated loads, home energy management systems, ENERGY STAR® white goods. And we're going to incentivize 100-percent LED lighting. And we're going to award best practices like the Department of Energy Zero Energy Ready Homes and balanced ventilation. And as I said before, we're maintaining conceptual design with the 2013 program to make it easier on participants so you just have to learn the new code. Our actual process is going to stay all the same. Next slide.
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So with the switch from CAHP score to EDR score, the analogy I like to use for this is, it's like switching between Fahrenheit and Celsius. We're still measuring the same thing; we're just using a different scale to measure it. The scores are the same. It's a whole-home energy design score. They're both modelable in the CEC software. They both use TDV energy. And they both use a Title 24 rule set. The difference is the reference home. The reason we made this switch is the EDR score is what the CEC is using to determine zero net energy, and it also more closely aligns with the national RESNET HERS score, which is something that the industry has been asking for. So that really led to our switching to the EDR score as opposed to the CAHP score, moving forward. Next slide.
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So as I said, the Energy Design Rating roughly aligns with the RESNET HERS score. It's currently modelable and in the new versions of CBECC-Res and EnergyPro. It's based on TDV energy, includes all home energy uses. We'll base core incentives on EDR before applying solar, and I'll get a little more into that in a moment. And we will work ZNE kickers for an EDR score of 0, which California code considers a zero net energy home. Next slide.
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So we're splitting the program into two groups. We're calling them the coastal and inland group, or you could think of these as primarily heating or primarily cooling groups. The reason we are doing this is when we started running models with the new code, we found that it would have been extremely easy for homes in the central valley and the primarily heating zones, where energy use is more intense, it would have been much easier for them to qualify for the program. And in the more tempered climates, along the Pacific and Nevada coast here, we see that we would have had a real hard time getting homes to qualify for the program just because their energy use isn't intense and they're not able to save as much because they're not using as much. So with that being said, we split it into two groups, based on climate zones. Next slide.
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So here's what everybody's really interested in. This is the incentive portion. So we're having four plays of kickers. We're having zero net energy kickers, performance-embedded kickers that will help your EDR score, bonus cash kickers, and then we have hybrid kickers that are kind of a mixture of performance-embedded EDR, bonuses, and a cash kicker on top. Next slide.
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So these are the program kickers for next year. The first two listed are our zero net energy kickers. So this program is an efficiency program, so we want to look at efficiency first before we look at any generation. So for either one of these kickers, your model has to qualify for the program before any solar is taken into account. The good thing is that the current software gives you two EDR scores. It gives you an EDR score with solar applied and without solar applied. So the first kicker here, the $1,000, is for a zero net energy home. So that means that the home when modeled shows an EDR score eligible for the program before solar is applied. And when the solar is applied, that EDR score drops to 0, which is qualified as a zero net energy home. And for that, we'll give you a $1,000 kicker. So for just design for zero net energy ready, which is the same entry point, so you still have to qualify for the program before solar is applied. And in this case, it would be where solar is not installed in the home but the solar-ready zone is there, and when it's modeled with the 3 kW PV system, it reaches an EDR score of 0. So that means that it's zero net energy ready, and we will give a $500 kicker for that one. So for high-performance attics, high-performance walls, and whole-house fans, these are our hybrid kickers. So with those, just putting those in your model is going to help your EDR score, which is going to give you a higher base incentive. And then we're going to give cash kickers on top of that, $200 for high-performance attics and high-performance walls, and $100 for the whole-house fan. Strictly cash kickers -- we're going to give $100 cash kicker for balanced indoor air quality ventilation, and we're going to give a $400 cash bonus for certified Department of Energy zero net energy ready homes. And then for the last three listed, these are going to be EDR performance-embedded kickers. So for all ENERGY STAR white goods, we'll reduce your EDR score by 2 to 3 points. For a whole energy management system, we'll reduce your score by 1 to 2 points. And for LED lighting, we'll reduce your score up to 1 point, which will lead to a higher base incentive. Next slide.
Jamie Lyons:
Nic, if I could just interject quickly with a question. Are these various kickers additive, so they're not exclusive to each other -- a project could accrue several of these kickers?
Nic Dunfee:
Yes, they can. The only ones that are not are the balanced IAQ and the zero net energy homes, because -- I can't think off the top of my head the reason why, but the two of those can't be taken together. Those are the only ones that can't be taken together. So in that case, we would give you the higher of the two kickers. Beyond that, these are all cumulative. Obviously, if you're designing for zero net energy, you're now going to get the zero net energy ready bonus. But beyond that, yes, these are all cumulative and per lot.
Jamie Lyons:
Thanks for that clarification. If anybody in the audience could just send us a quick chat that they can hear my voice, that'd be much appreciated, because we were having some audio difficulty earlier. Keep you moving forward here, Nic.
Nic Dunfee:
Great. So we're going to look now at the program basis for the coastal group. So this is the primarily heating group. This is the more temperate climate. So for entry into the program in these climate zones, we require an EDR score of 48, and we require an asset EDR score of 48. You get an entry incentive, base incentive of $500 per lot. And then for every point you go down between 48 to 44, you get a $200 bonus per point. And then for every point below 44, we'll add on $400 per lot. And then the kickers and the incentives here are just what I covered on the last slide. Next slide is the inland group.
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So these are the primarily cooling groups. Little more energy-intensive. So we require a lower EDR score for entry. So it's a 44 to get into the program, and you get that $500 base incentive. And then for every point down to 40, you'll receive $150 per lot. And then for every point below 40, we'll give an additional $300 per lot. And then the kickers and the incentives are the same for both climate zones. Next slide.
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So program implementation detail. This is a slight change to the program this year. The program eligibility is applied at the planned level rather than the project level. So previously if a project was submitted to us with four different plans being used in the project, one of those plans did not qualify, the entire project was disqualified from being allowed into the program. So we're changing that this year and we're going to a lot-by-lot basis. So that one plan that did not qualify, now we just won't include those lots in the program, but we will include all the other lots that did qualify within that project into the program. As I mentioned earlier, we are an efficiency program, so you can use the PV offset as part of your compliance in the state of the California, but we do not use PV offset as part of our EDR calculation that we use for entry into the program. So as I mentioned, the software will give you two EDR scores, an EDR with and without solar. And we are basing all of our entry-level on the EDR without solar. The only time we look at the EDR with solar is for the two zero net energy kickers, and that's the only time that we take that PV offset into account. And as with the CAHP program, it is permit to program. That means that whatever permits you apply for is the program. So if you are applying for permits after January 1, you'll be enrolled in the 2017 program, which is the 2016 code cycle. And if you're applying for permits before then, you'll be enrolled in the current 2016 program. And if anybody would like any information about the current program, we could talk about that offline. Next slide.
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So again, I'm Nic Dunfee with the California Advanced Homes Program, and does anybody have any questions?
Jamie Lyons:
Hi, Nic, ah, yea, we have a few questions teed up here. Let me ask some of them to you. So the first one is regarding the white goods. Will the white goods -- will the added points for high-efficiency white goods give a false EDR? That's how it's written. I guess, trying to interpret that, maybe what's the impact of high-efficiency white goods on the EDR score?
Nic Dunfee:
Basically that's something that we will adjust afterwards. Currently that is not added in to the software. We're hoping to get that added into the software, sometime the first of the year. Currently you just want to get your EDR score as the software permits, and then we will adjust it on the back end to give you those extra points for the all ENERGY STAR white goods. Does that make sense?
Jamie Lyons:
OK. Sounds like there's a program change in the works, but for right now white goods are not --
Nic Dunfee:
We're still ironing out the details of those three measures. The ENERGY STAR white goods, the whole energy management system, and the LED lighting. We're still ironing out the details of those. That's why on the slide it has a range of points possible, because we're still nailing down exactly how that's going to work, and then we'll get it integrated into the software, hopefully for the next version released.
Jamie Lyons:
OK. Let me pass along another one. Does the use of heat pump water heaters and space heaters restrict use of the program?
Nic Dunfee:
No, it does not. There were some modeling issues, but we believe we have them resolved, so no, it does not restrict entry into the program.
Jamie Lyons:
With respect to EnergyPro, one of our attendees today said they don't see the EDR score in EnergyPro. Is it already included in EnergyPro version 7.1?
Nic Dunfee:
Yes, the newest version that came out, that has the CAHP score removed and an EDR score. I actually have not used it, to be honest, but I was on the phone with EnergyPro just yesterday discussing it with them, and they assured me that it was in, that the EDR score is in the most recent version and the CAHP score has been removed.
Jamie Lyons:
OK. How about sort of a high-level one: Why not just use the HERS score?
Nic Dunfee:
That is a good question. We have some -- there are some other things that we want to take into account beyond the HERS score. Actually, I would like to take that one offline, to be honest. I'm not actually the person who worked on that decision but I do know there is a difference in the score, but off the top of my head right now, I can't tell you what it is. I can't respond to that -- I'll have someone respond to that question, though.
Jamie Lyons:
I think another attendee offered the insight that it doesn't reflect time-dependent valuation of energy, which is the paradigm for California.
Nic Dunfee:
That's kind of what I thought it was, but I'm more familiar with the EDR, and I'm not that familiar with the RESNET HERS, so I wasn't sure if it was TDV or not. So that would have been my guess, but I didn't want to say that because I wasn't positive that was it.
Jamie Lyons:
OK. Yes, so to the person who asked that question, I would advise you to send Nic an email and follow up with him that way for more information. We've got kind of a nice wave of questions coming in ... Let's see ... There was one about the separation of the two zones, Nic. The coastal areas use less energy, so why the separation and the higher entry targets as opposed to the valley zone and inland, where you will save more energy and at a lower cost?
Nic Dunfee:
It's to make the program more fair, because it's easier to get a lower EDR score in areas where the energy use intensity is higher. So because you use more energy, there's more availability for efficiency than there is in the coastal groups. And when we run models it was just showing us that we couldn't come up with a score across the board that would work across the state. So if we stuck with the straight EDR score, hardly any buildings on the coast would have qualified for the program, and pretty much anything on the inland coast -- in the central valley would have qualified. It's really just to make the program fair for entry regardless of what climate zone you're in. It would have really set people on the coast at a disadvantage.
Jamie Lyons:
OK, well, thank-you, Nic. And again, sorry for the audio difficulties at the outset, folks. My name is Jamie Lyons. I work with the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program. I'm joined here today by Sam Rashkin of DOE, the program lead for DOE Zero Energy Ready Home. So the overview, quickly, in a nutshell for today was simply to give California building industry partners an overview of both the California Advanced Homes Program and how that can integrate with the national DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program. So over the remainder of the session here, Sam will take us through a high-level view of the program and zero energy homes, and then I'll spend a little bit of time on the specs for the program.
Sam Rashkin:
OK, thank-you, Jamie, and welcome, everyone.
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So let's start with the consumer campaign for the Zero Energy Ready Home program, because this really hits a key message we're bringing out to consumers in a way that we hope within the next year you'll see a lot more awareness and interest in all things zero.
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So let's start with the goals of the campaign, and they're two-prong. One is to educate consumers on the compelling value of Zero Energy Ready Home. This is a whole different type of opportunity for the homebuyer and it's a challenge to educate them on all the benefits of these kinds of homes. And the second goal is to showcase the Zero Energy Ready Home experience that takes home ownership to a whole new level. It's one thing to understand the value propositions; it's another to see actual empirical results that speak to a different level of experience.
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So I want to start first by looking at the supply chain for Zero Energy Ready Home to explain how this campaign works. And so we have a product, a voluntary label for Zero Energy Ready Home. Then we have a distribution network, which involves manufacturers, associations, utilities, with concomitant interests that can work with us to reach out to the industry. And then there's a sales force, the HERS raters, Building America teams, that are on the front lines working with builders every day to help engage them about this program. Then the core customers, the ones who actually take our program and put it into action, the builders, developers, affordable housing providers, the military housing organizations. All those groups are our core customers. And the end customer is the homebuyer who gets to live in these homes. And lastly, the transaction process involves realtors, appraisers, lenders, insurers who have to also be involved and recognize the value of Zero Energy Ready Home. So this is our complete supply chain. And what we're looking to do is effectively initiate a campaign with our distribution network that reaches out to consumers to again be educated and to understand the complete change in the experience based on precedence of seeing actual homes. So this is what we're trying to do.
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And so let's just take a quick review of our product. And our product of Zero Energy Ready Home label is really one that delivers six complete systems. So even a minimum-code home already has an advanced enclosure. What we're going to do is look at the forward-looking next-generation code cycle and build to that with an optimized enclosure system. Then we're going to have a complete water protection system from top to bottom that looks at every key area for providing details of flashing and protection against water leakage. And then we have an optimized comfort system that is both professionally installed and high-efficient. Then we have a complete indoor air quality system that manages the source of contaminants, dilutes any residual contaminants, and in the end also provides filtration to capture particulates. And then we have efficient components throughout the house. And the last system is we have solar-ready construction to minimize the disruption and cost of installing solar in the future, if it's not provided when the house is built. So those are six key systems with every home. It's a home to the power of zero. And an easy way to find this complete package is with a label from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Zero Energy Ready Home label. So that's the product. The challenge is, what's the core message for engaging consumers? This is a pretty complicated setup of propositions and ingredients that go into each and every home. How do we message this to a consumer?
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And so I want to talk about our consumer campaign. And really, what we're doing is saying -- we almost have to go through a soul-searching process of basically thinking what really is our core message. And at the end of the day, there are lots of lots of programs, green and ENERGY STAR, that all deliver more efficient performance, better comfort, various degrees of health improvements and durability improvements, and so really, what's different about Zero Energy Ready Home? And in thinking deeply about what drives this program, we realized this program is based on the best practices and best recommendations from the leading experts in our nation working with the Building America program.
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And so in fact, our core is that we're the expert's choice. In addition, we polled hundreds of experts -- raters, researchers, architects, engineers, building science experts -- and when we asked them to choose between a code home, an ENERGY STAR home, and a Zero Energy Ready Home that are identical, virtually 100 percent would choose Zero Energy Ready Home. So we have extreme confidence this is an incredibly effective way for us to go after consumers. Much like you'd be at Uncle Max, who's the best car mechanic in the world, and you're about to buy a car. And Uncle Max gave you the solid advice about what's the best choice for you. Your confidence is incredibly higher in making such a big purchase. Such is the case now with new homes. And let me run you through the storyboard, if you will, for a video that we have on our website.
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So it starts with the realization that a home is in fact one of the biggest purchases of a lifetime. And the other realization that if you don't get it right during construction, it's often prohibitively expensive to fix it later. And that's why homes are like an overwhelming purchase for consumers. There are so many things they focus on in terms of floor plan, location, architecture. When it comes to performance, it's really complicated figuring if you're making the right decision. Well, now, you know what the experts would choose. And they would in fact effectively look for seven must-have systems in each and every home that they would want. Leading experts would always insist on an optimized thermal protection system, because it meets and exceeds next-generation code, much like getting the 2020 model car today in 2016. You're getting the 2020 model home today in 2016, making each and every home labeled future-ready. Leading experts would always insist on a complete water protection system, because it manages potential leak and mold problems, making each and every home moisture-ready. Leading experts would always insist on high-performance heating and cooling, because they ensure both energy-efficient equipment and professional installation, making each and every home comfort-ready. Leading experts always insist on high-efficiency components because typically they provide also improved performance, quality, and durability, making each home tech-ready. And leading experts would always choose comprehensive indoor air quality, because it includes all the requirements of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Indoor airPLUS program, making each home health-ready. And leading experts would always choose solar-ready construction, because it minimizes the cost and disruption of adding solar in the future, making each house zero-ready. And lastly, leading experts would always insist on enhanced quality assurance, because it makes sure that your home comes with third-party inspections and testing, diagnostics, and detailed checklists that make your home performance-ready. Maybe most importantly, leading experts know that you can get all this tremendous added value in your home often at lower cost, because the small increase in the mortgage that may result from the additional cost to achieve this performance can easily be offset by the monthly savings in the utility bill. And they know that they can get all this benefit, all this value, by simply looking for a Zero Energy Ready label. And they then -- of course, we want to say that there's this location for you to get all the information you need to help you make such a purchase. So this is our core message. Everything hangs on this key concept that the leading experts would want all this value, each and every building block, it would be essential to them in their next new home.
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The second part I want to talk about that gets into the campaign begins with something we do called the Housing Innovation Awards. Each year we recognize leading builders who build Zero Energy Ready Homes. There are grand winners who get the crystal on the left, and there are a whole array of winners that get the plaque. They're all, in our mind, incredibly important leadership players in the housing industry.
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And if you win this award, you get a place on the Tour of Zero. And the way the Tour of Zero works, and this will be the focus of our campaign, first you have the video. And it follows that storyline we just discussed about the home leading experts would choose. And that's why it's the home of the future today. Then you have the map that gets you to the Tour of Zero. If I were to click on this, where I'm pointing now, to the hot-dry Phoenix climate, I would get a list of homes in that market that demonstrate a whole new home ownership experience.
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I can click on one here, Gordon Estates, and it will pop up the Tour of Zero feature for that home.
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And this is all the content -- typically the page looks like this when you first get it.
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And you can go through the outside of the home, seeing various models or various elevations of the home, go inside of the home, see what the home looks like. Just like in a normal real estate site. But then you can go down and get the details. And I hope you notice how little text is provided here, and how simple the information is. Most compelling and important is the homeowner experience. There's a headline that's a summary of the more-detailed testimonial on the left. On the top, they were so impressed when they bought this home, had a whole different experience. And then you have the detailed statistics -- the square footage, number of bedrooms, the HERS index score, which in this case is -1. You have the average monthly utility bill, which in this case is -$94. And you also, if I circle this part over here, you get the amount saved over a 30-year mortgage because of these lower utility bills; it's about $113,000-$114,000. When I go over here to the list of features, they are provided in consumer-friendly terminology. We've translated technical jargon into experience-based terminology. And if you click on "Read more," you get a four-page write-up about that specific home. Often there are videos that could be watched. And if you click on "More" under the floorplan, you get the detailed floorplans that we have for all the homes on the Tour. Lastly, if you want to meet the builder and see how you get a home from this particular builder, it will take you to the Zero Energy Ready Home locator tool page for that builder, which has their accomplishments and how to reach that builder. The Tour of Zero has home after home after home in each and every region of the country showing a different home ownership experience.
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And the key for us now is the national campaign to get people to both be educated with the video and to have the experience-based tour of these homes. And we're asking our concomitant-interest partners to work with us to inspire American homebuyers and homeowners to visit and see the future of housing today, with Zero Energy Ready Homes. And the key partners that we focused on are manufacturers, associations, utilities, and lenders. And we think there are some compelling interests for all of them. Notice that the Tour will go on our partners' websites, and they can invite consumers to go take the Tour.
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Looking at each of these partners, first is manufacturers and associations. Their concomitant interest is that by getting more homebuyers interested in Zero Energy Ready Homes, there'll be more exposure to the highest-performing products that their companies make. And more exposure to the homes for those products installed properly. Also, those products will be installed as part of a complete system, so their products will lead to a better consumer experience, and they'll be recognized as a leader. For utilities, being a partner adds value because they'll help promote homes that reduce peak load demand, and it'll be a lead-in for other services and new businesses as utilities' business model shift. They'll get more involved in solar energy systems, energy storage systems, advanced controls and diagnostics. So by promoting Zero Energy Ready Home, utilities help get their position in for this new business model of the future. And lastly, lenders, by promoting these homes, are promoting homes where there are higher customer satisfaction with homes that they're vested in. And they'll also be vested in homes with lower financial risk and technical risk, because the cost of ownership is lower. There's less risk of moisture / durability issues, and these homes are positioned to have higher future value.
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So we have this innovation partnership where we reach out to associations, manufacturers, utilities and so forth to be leaders with us to reach out to America to experience the home of the future today. Their commitment is to place the Tour promotion button that you see up here on the upper right on at least three major consumer-facing communications each year. We also invite them to take the consumer video and link to it directly or place the consumer video on their websites, as well. So that's our campaign. I'm now going to hand it off to Jamie to walk you through our Zero specifications.
Jamie Lyons:
Very good. Thank-you, Sam. And thanks, everybody, for sticking with us. We'll roll right into this third and final segment, and then we'll pause and we can pick up any remaining questions at that point.
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So this is sort of the 10,000- foot view of our program, and Sam alluded to these complete systems a few minutes ago. And they're really the building blocks of the program, the six core blocks that you see down on the bottom of the screen. And I like to think of them as the foundation. They are beneath the house. But they also really support all the risk management, value propositions that Zero Energy Ready Home offers to our builders, dealing with things like lower loads, less drying potential in new homes, different indoor air quality issues and risks than were faced in previous years. And also all the differentiation opportunities to build homes that are future-ready, health-ready, homes full of advanced technologies in these homes that are Zero Energy Ready Home. So this is sort of the top-down view of the specs. And we're not going to go through them in great detail today, but I do want to just sort of open up each one of these six building blocks and give you an idea of what's inside.
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And I kind of like to tell builders and raters, designers, utilities, and other folks interested in the program that if you're familiar with ENERGY STAR Homes, you're going to know about three-quarters of our program. If you're familiar with ENERGY STAR Homes and the EPA Indoor airPLUS program, you probably already know 80 to 85 percent of the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program. And that's because these six key building blocks really just leverage other already-available, off-the-shelf specifications that are already out there in the marketplace and fairly well-known. So just starting with our first building block, the optimized enclosure. We start our specifications on how to get that optimized enclosure simply by referencing ENERGY STAR Homes. Every DOE Zero Energy Ready Home as a prereq is qualified as an ENERGY STAR home. And so from that credential we get things like a good alignment between the thermal barrier and the air barrier of the home, things of that nature. And then we want to go a little bit further and go a little bit further beyond that. So we have a backstop that our envelope is going to be at least as good as a home built to the 2012 IECC. Or, in the case of California, the 2013 Title 24, whichever is more stringent, in terms of the envelope specs. And then on top of that, we want to have good windows in the homes. So our windows are dialed in to the ENERGY STAR window specifications for a given climate zone.
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Next building block is that optimized comfort system. So again we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. We start with an ENERGY STAR qualified home; that gives us some of the real basic building science we need. Like we know that we've done proper load sizing, counts for heating and cooling design loads, and sized the equipment properly. On top of that, a real big one with us is making sure we get the duct system right. We call that an optimized duct location. We don't want to label a home as DOE Zero Energy Ready if we have attics up in -- or excuse me, ducts in a 140-degree attic with nothing but an R-8 insulation jacket around them. We want to do more than that. So the spec calls out several measures for either completely locating ducts in conditioned space or some optimized locations where the overall performance is just about as good as being in conditioned space. And more on that in a minute, with respect to Title 24.
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Next building block is the complete IAQ. A to Z indoor air quality, so we're doing all the things that matter. Again, we start with ENERGY STAR qualified homes. It gives us again some real basic concepts like whole-house mechanical ventilation. On top of that, here for the first time we look at this EPA Indoor airPLUS label. This is a national set of indoor air quality specifications for homes that builds on ENERGY STAR and then rounds them out, to make sure that if we're in a radon zone 1, that we have passive radon mitigation. If we're in these tightly sealed homes that are now the norm in the industry, that we look at things like the paints, the carpets, the pressed-wood products, and make sure they're low-emission. We look for enhanced combustion safety and better filtration. Those are some of the key items that we get with the Indoor airPLUS label. So again, that's our complete indoor air quality systems, those two building blocks.
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Next building block is the water protection. These homes -- we really need to pay attention to water protection because of less drying potential and greater wetting potential, given the insulation of the homes. We can start again with ENERGY STAR qualified homes, which has a water management checklist, and then on top of that, again, we go back to the Indoor airPLUS label because moisture is closely linked with indoor air quality, so there's a number of additional moisture protections that we can gain from the Indoor airPLUS program. Things like using sump pumps, using appropriate flooring materials in wet areas, using aggregate beneath the slab to promote drainage and moisture protection around the foundation. And then if we're in the hot-humid southeast part of the country, we have some supplemental RH control measures. That's our complete water protection system.
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Next, efficient components. As we move toward higher-performing homes, the components become a bigger and bigger slice of the energy budget, as heating and cooling is reduced. So we want to pay attention to those things. So we're looking here not toward the ENERGY STAR Homes but rather the ENERGY STAR label on products, products like the appliances, like we just heard about from Nic. Products like the exhaust fans, where we want to have exhaust fans which are not only high efficacy, they move a lot of air, with little power. But I also love that ENERGY STAR-labeled exhaust fans are quiet. So the residents are more likely to use them. ENERGY STAR ceiling fans. And our water heating efficiency target is based on an ENERGY STAR qualified water heater. And then in addition to that, to round out our complete component system, we look for high-efficiency lighting for 80 percent of the fixtures. And then we look for efficient hot water distribution. We don't want to have a distribution system which wastes not only hot water heating energy but also a lot of water because it's poorly designed. So that's our final piece of efficient components.
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And then lastly, our sixth and final building block is just the simple solar-readiness. These are Zero Energy Ready Homes, so we point to a checklist we call the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home PV ready checklist. And it's really just a handful of measures which are no-cost or low-cost measures that make the home much more easily accommodate PV, if and when it's added in the future. We really didn't even have to invent this. Most of this guide is gleaned from an EPA guide on renewable-ready features for homes.
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So those are our six key building blocks. And again, we can drill into more detail, and you can certainly look at the specs in more detail to see what's involved. But again, if you know ENERGY STAR Homes, and if you know the Indoor airPLUS program, you really know most of our program. And then the added lift are those measures which bring us up to DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes. So speaking of the actual requirements, the program requirements for DOE Zero Energy Ready Home is a national set of requirements. But given California's unique context with Title 24, we've taken those national requirements and tweaked them just a bit, and those are the program requirements for projects in the state of California.
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Just some real basic info on how to even find these specs: Here at the top of this screen -- this is the website for our program; you can certainly just do a web search on DOE Zero Ready, or it's a pretty simple website, buildings.energy.gov/zero. If you were to go there to look for the California specs, you can get there through a few different pathways. The one I would recommend is just look at this left-hand menu item; it's called "Program Requirements." You would click on that.
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And then once you get to the requirements page, you scroll down a little bit to an area about state-specific requirements, and there you can see a section specifically geared toward California. And here's the link toward the California specs.
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Just sort of the high-level view of what they look and feel like: There's three main sections. There's the mandatory requirements. These are more or less the must-haves for DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes. These are things like the home is certified under ENERGY STAR Homes. The ducts are in one of those optimized duct locations. Things like that. On top of those, in the second section, we have the thing that we call the target home. I like to say that the target home really just sets the bar for how efficient the home needs to be. So the national HERS rating software will model your design home, and in the background it's also modeling a target home, an exact twin, but it's dialed in to these target home specs, which are defined here in this section. Essentially, it sets the HERS target for how efficient that home needs to be. Actual projects can trade off in many, many ways, as long as the overall HERS value is at least as good as that target home. In California, as we'll see in a minute, raters and builders can either use the national HERS score to qualify homes or a percent better than Title 24 basis. We'll talk more about that in just a minute. And finally, the third part of our framework for the specs is the size adjustment factor. If you're familiar with ENERGY STAR Homes' size adjustment factor, it's the exact same setup as that.
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Homes that are larger than a benchmark home size that we see here, will have a more rigorous energy-efficiency target for that project to qualify.
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So here's a quick close-up of the California mandatory requirements. For the most part, they're identical to the national program requirements. There are a few things that give a nod to California's energy code context. So here, item number two talks about the building envelope, and it needs to be -- the ceiling wall, floor, slab insulation needs to be at least as good as 2012 IECC or California Title 24-13 insulation requirements, whichever is more stringent. So there's some things like that, where we want to make sure that our projects are in alignment with Title 24.
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And one more quick example of that I'd like to point out. I've mentioned that we want the ducts to be not a liability in terms of the home's energy performance. So they're either fully within conditioned space or they follow one of quite a different number of design options, which our program recognizes, which are just within a few percent as good as being fully within conditioned space. And this last item down here is specific just to California, and again, it gives a nod to the Title 24-2016 provisions, where the high-performance attic assembly is now part of the upcoming code there.
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So we recognize that, that if a home follows the high-performance attic specs that are spelled out in the Title 24-16, then that is an option that our program would recognize for the ducts being OK in that high-performance attic location. So just a little more detail on what that looks and feels like. We simply refer this option to the appropriate section of Title 24, Table 150-21-A, and in practical terms, it might like look like this in many parts of California, depending on the climate zone. R-13 beneath the roof deck, R-38 on the attic floor, R-8 ducts sealed to a tight leakage level of 5 percent leakage. So just a quick example of how our program, at the national DOE level, is trying to accommodate and align with the current and upcoming direction of codes and above-code programs in California.
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Compliance pathways in California, and also we're trying to be flexible and acknowledge the different code out there and code compliance software modeling which occurs. So we have a few different options. Projects can comply with DOE Zero Ready simply by being prescriptive, following just the prescriptive requirements of the program, right on the mark. They can go performance path, really, so they're modeling the home as they would anywhere else using national HERS software and still meeting the California mandatory items. We have some builders that do that because they operate within and outside California codes and then they're accustomed to using national HERS rating software. As I mentioned earlier, we also have a pathway that uses a percent better than Title 24 compliance basis. And the bar is set at 25 percent better than Title 24-13. We're going to leave the bar there for roughly all of 2017 as we start to benchmark our program again for the upcoming version of Title 24 and make adjustments accordingly. That will happen late in 2017, approximately. So everything that Nic described with the Zero Energy Ready Home kicker within the CAHP program, should remain just as it is for the entirety of 2017. And finally, there's a third performance path also using Title 24 compliance, which offers greater -- some more flexibility involving side-by-side modeling.
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So wrapping up, just a few quick examples of what projects that qualify for DOE Zero Energy Ready look and feel like within the state of California.
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Again, through the lens of the national HERS rating score, much of California is in climate zone 3, in terms of the IECC climate zones. There's some in climate zone 2. And based on our modeling and benchmarking, the HERS index to qualify -- the national HERS index to qualify for the Zero Ready program is going to be in the mid- to upper 50s, 55, 56. It depends on the project but that's the general ballpark for HERS scores for qualifying projects.
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And then here's just a quick example of a project that's been modeled for California climate zone 12, which is IECC zone 3. And here are the basic specs. It's an R-38 vented attic, pretty well-air-sealed, 2.5 ACH 50. Pretty good windows, 0.3 U-factor. High-efficiency gas furnace, 15 SEER AC. The efficiency factor for that water heater is right on par with an ENERGY STAR gas tank water heater. Efficient lighting, ENERGY STAR appliances. Once this was modeled in terms of Title 24 compliance, it ends up being 29 percent better than the '13 version of Title 24. And just a note down here that the specs shown in this example are the prescriptive minimums. So it gives you a look and feel for qualifying for Zero Energy Ready Home within Title 24 compliance. And I should note, this is the energy part. Again, though, we have those mandatory items like the complete indoor air quality, like the moisture protection checklist, things like that, that are also part of the package.
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Couple quick shots from the Tour of Zero that Sam mentioned. Here's a multifamily project that was built out at Spring Lake by Mutual Housing California. A multifamily that achieved very high levels of energy performance.
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This was one of our award-winning projects in the Housing Innovation Awards. The Tour of Zero, it gives you, again, very graphic and some high-level specs on the project, the HERS value, the monthly energy savings bill. Down here it gives you the net present value of all those savings over the life of a 30-year mortgage. Single-family project here built by KB Home. This ZeroHouse 3.0, also on the DOE Tour of Zero. Here are some of the specs for that project. So just a couple quick examples of a few different project types already built in California that have been part of our program and actually received awards.
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So let me see if I can launch this poll as we close up. Just a sneak preview. We're just asking you about your possible program participation in both DOE Zero Ready as well as the CAHP program in the coming year. I'll launch this poll here for you shortly. Just kind of take the pulse of how this information is resonating.
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And we'll give you just a minute to respond to that, and then I'll open it up to closing questions, and I think our final slide gives you some program contact information. So at the risk of bumbling up the webinar software, I'll just kind of recite to you what the results are looking like. We're seeing 55 percent or so saying yes, they anticipate participating. About 28 percent are uncertain; 15 percent are no. That's great. That's very heartening to see that kind of interest in two respective programs here.
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OK, so let's open up the question box while we give you a second to take a look at the resources, next steps. And again, this is off of the DOE Zero Ready program. Certainly Nic and TRC are a good conduit into the California Advanced Homes Program materials and resources, as well. Take a look at that. Nic, feel free to weigh in and chime in here. I'm going to open up the question pane and see what remaining questions we might have.
Nic Dunfee:
Great.
Jamie Lyons:
Nic, can you provide your website and email, too? Might want to offer that up to the group here, if you would like to.
Nic Dunfee:
Yea. My email is ndunfee@trcsolutions. My last name is D as in David, U, N as in Nathan, F as in Frank, EE. @trcsolutions.com. And let me pull up the website -- the actual CAHP website here, so I can give you the right address.
Jamie Lyons:
OK, while you do that, I'll queue up a few questions here.
Nic Dunfee:
Actually, I've got it right now. It's cahp-pge.com. cahp-pge.com
Jamie Lyons:
OK. A few questions on the ductwork, which I'll try to roll into sort of one overview. I guess, just to clarify on the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home duct requirements. If you look at our specs, it requires an "optimized" duct location. At one point we (inaudible) conditioned space ducts, but if you look at our spec, we do recognize quite a few permutations of duct locations where the ducts are; they're not outside the thermal envelope entirely, they're not inside the thermal envelope entirely. They're sort of in the midst of the thermal envelope. One example being highly insulated, highly air-sealed (inaudible) ducts in a vented attic. There's a variation of that where those ducts are also encapsulated by spray foam, which is used in the eastern, more humid part of the U.S. Based on DOE and Building America research, there are several permutations of duct design which, as I said, are not quite as good as ducts being completely in conditioned space, but they are within just a few percent, in terms of the impact on heating and cooling energy. So the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program in terms of ducts requires that the duct location follow one of those prescriptive design scenarios which are recognized. And in California, that list includes the high-performance attic application as is described in the Title 24 code. We also had somebody ask about, what about ductless minisplits? They're absolutely eligible and permitted under the program. And we have a number of programs utilize that option for their HVAC system.
Another question: Will these specs be updated in January for the new code? That's a great question. We sort of follow the lead of ENERGY STAR Homes. They do this, as well. So when a state like California updates its code, programs like ENERGY STAR and DOE Zero Energy Ready need to look at that and re-benchmark our program in the context of that new code. We allow a one-year fade-in to do that, because the industry really is dealing with the baseline code transition at that point. So our program, DOE Zero Energy Ready Home, will remain in effect as it is now through the entirety of 2017. I'd say in the third and fourth quarter we'll start vetting some proposed changes to the program based on the new version of Title 24, which will be in place come January 1 of next year. Good question on that. I'm being told, we're just about to wrap it up here. I see a number of really good, very technical questions from several of you, so let me flip back this slide. I would just encourage you to email us here, and we're happy to have a dialogue via email or phone. We can get you the answers that you need. So we're right over our one-hour allotment here. So I think on behalf of Sam and DOE, I want to thank everybody. Nic, would you like to offer any closing comments or thoughts here?
Nic Dunfee:
No, just thanks for attending, and if you have any questions about the CAHP program or any of the residential new construction programs in P, G and E territory, please contact me and let me know. Thank-you.
Jamie Lyons:
I think on both of our behalfs, if you're interested in obtaining the slides, just send us a quick email and we'll be happy to make those available.
Nic Dunfee:
Yes, of course.
Jamie Lyons:
Alright, thanks, everybody. Have a great day.