ASHRAE Conference Puts Spotlight on Building Retrofits as Key to Decarbonization

A big industry conference is coming up in September in Seattle, hosted by ASHRAE, the trade group for heating and cooling engineers. The event's focus is a reminder of a basic fact about climate goals: most of the buildings that will exist in 2050 are already standing today. That means cutting carbon emissions from homes and buildings depends far more on upgrading what already exists than on building new. Sessions will cover things like electrification, heat pumps, and case studies such as the retrofit of the Empire State Building.

One thing worth knowing about: a growing number of cities and states have adopted Building Performance Standards, which set energy or emissions targets for existing buildings and can carry penalties for not meeting them. These rules mostly apply to larger commercial and multifamily buildings for now, but they signal the direction policy is heading, and it's worth checking whether your city or state has anything in the works that could eventually touch homeowners too.

The rest of the conference agenda is aimed at engineers and contractors rather than homeowners directly, covering technical topics like cooling systems for data centers. But the broader trend it points to, more electrification, more heat pumps, and more retrofit work happening everywhere, reflects the same shift that shows up in home energy rebate programs and efficiency upgrades available to homeowners now.