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All-Electric Aquatic Centers Lead the Way in Decarbonization
by: Ryan Tripp, LEED Green Associate
TOPICS DISCUSSED:
I am a junior at Dartmouth College, studying Environmental Engineering. I spent this fall as a research fellow at ELS, exploring the environmental, social, and wellness benefits of ELS’s trailblazing all-electric aquatic centers. Below, I'll share what I found. All-Electric
Aquatics
Architecture
Sustainability
Once completed, the new Piedmont Community Aquatic Center (left and at top) will be one of the first all-electric aquatics centers in the entire state.
ELS is currently working with three Bay Area cities (Mountain View, South San Francisco, and Piedmont) on new facilities that help address the local demand for aquatics. Apart from all the standard requirements – including deep, competition-sized pools, smaller pools for lessons and recreation, and extensive programming throughout – each project has an objective that might be less familiar to many: eliminating the use of natural gas.
Once built, these three projects will be among California’s first all-electric aquatic centers. In my time here, I’ve been impressed by the courage of cities to take on these new challenges and by ELS’ adaptability in a changing landscape. Before long, I expect all-electric aquatic centers won’t be seen as cutting-edge but simply part of how things are done. It can sometimes be hard to describe the connection between sustainability and personal wellbeing. But these facilities are especially exciting because they are centerpieces for putting those two concepts together, all under one roof.
An Evolving Marketplace
We have long known that large public swimming pools have enormous heating requirements. Historically, large natural gas boilers were the only choice for municipalities, yet those boilers are now past any claims of being cost-effective. Apart from all the immediate health risks, they are a major driver of climate change, releasing carbon dioxide when burned and leaking methane during transport. Methane is the principal component of natural gas, and its leakages are both commonplace and difficult to detect. Though its atmospheric lifetime is shorter, methane’s immediate impact on climate change dwarfs that of carbon dioxide with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 81-83 times more than carbon dioxide over a twenty-year timeframe. (Even over a 100-year timeframe, methane’s GWP is still estimated to be 27-30 times that of carbon dioxide).
Among the many other problems with opting for natural gas in municipal pool operations, energy grids up and down the west coast are rapidly transitioning away from gas. Moreover, measures such as carbon and fossil fuel taxes have grown more tenable politically. Their passage would further increase the operating costs of gas heating.
Gas infrastructure costs are likely to increase too – if new gas lines even remain a possibility. With the growing popularity of natural gas bans in new construction, we are seeing reduced investment in distribution pipelines, which forces increased maintenance costs onto fewer existing gas-powered buildings. Given the long operating timescale of aquatics centers, it seems possible that any gas-fired pools built today might, given the cumulative cost of natural gas operations, need retrofitting soon after construction is complete – not cheap.
Set that against a much more optimistic outlook for heat pumps, which are benefiting from a drop in production costs as economies of scale grow. Multiple new commercial-scale heat pumps are now on the market, promising increased efficiency and savings for future projects. Until recently, there haven’t been many options for large heat pumps capable of heating municipal pools, which meant that a single aquatic center might use ten or twenty smaller heat pumps instead of one or two larger units. Now, larger, more efficient heat pumps promise to simplify operations and reduce costs. Additionally, some new designs use alternative refrigerants, drastically reducing the warming impact of any potential leakage and end-of-life management.
In another boost, evolving government measures are expected to support the nascent industry. For 2025, California plans to update its Title 24 building code in ways that will require onsite renewable energy generation or electric heat pumps. Additionally, state and federal heat pump subsidies are expected to decrease the cost of transitioning away from natural gas.
That’s the backdrop that the leaders of Mountain View, Piedmont, and South San Francisco saw when weighing the decision to eliminate natural gas. Yet each project took a slightly different path in getting there. In Mountain View’s case, “reach codes” prohibited natural gas in new residential and commercial buildings, compelling the decision for the new center to be all electric. In Piedmont, the electrification effort drew a “vocal contingent of supporters,” according to former City Administrator Sara Lillevand. Informed by ELS’ input and analysis, the design process culminated in a unanimous city council decision to adopt the all-electric design. In South San Francisco, Philip Vitale, the city’s Deputy Director of Capital Projects, framed the city’s perspective on electrification as, “If we’re going to ask this of our business community and the residential community, then we should ask it of ourselves.”
The new Rengstorff Park Aquatic Center in Mountain View is one of several all-electric facilities that exemplify the trend of moving away from natural gas-fired operations.
To meet the challenge, ELS recommended using electric heat pumps instead of traditional gas boilers. By relying on electricity, each city can – depending on the size of its pools and solar array – expect to avert between 220 and 400 tons of CO2 each year, eliminating one of their largest sources of municipal emissions. Working with engineering consultants Guttmann & Blaevoet on two of the three projects, our team created alternative gas scenarios that had forecasted annual gas usages of up to 73,000 therms – usages that will be completely avoided by the shift to heat pumps.
In addition to heat pumps, each design uses photovoltaic (PV) panels to generate electricity, offsetting some of the load used for heating. The Piedmont and Mountain View projects heat even more efficiently by supplementing their traditional PV panels with photovoltaic thermal panels (PVT), which convert solar energy into both thermal energy (heating pools directly) and electricity.
On-site PV and PVT use contributes substantially to the economic upside of projects, too. Our team’s initial life-cycle cost analyses show payback times that range from 14 years (in South San Francisco) to 20 years (in Piedmont), after which the lower cost of electricity relative to gas starts to generate significant savings.
The natatorium for South San Francisco's new Orange Memorial Park Aquatic Center. Beyond the environmental and economic benefits, each aquatic center will be a hub for its community.
Electricity not produced onsite will be bought by each city’s respective Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program, allowing cities to purchase 100% renewable energy. With the funds generated from sales, CCAs make further investments in new clean energy capacity. On these projects, CCA programs have had clear benefits for the bottom line. For South San Francisco’s new aquatic center, all PV panels were funded by its CCA, Peninsula Clean Energy, helping to save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars during the construction phase. In Piedmont, the organization now known as Ava Community Energy granted the project a $750,000 interest-free loan. It will replace a pool that had seen years of energy inefficiencies and chronic water leaks. Lillevand shared that updating the center will “meet the demonstrated aquatic needs of the community.” She also described the decision to electrify as “courageous and the right thing to do.”
Trailblazing projects like these demonstrate the leadership of everyone involved. It’s clear that for decades to come, they will symbolize their community’s commitment to the energy transition.
Looking at a New Horizon
The landscape for this kind of work is evolving rapidly, with policies and technologies seeing near-constant updates. But the ELS team provides an experienced point of view that readily adopts the best practices regarding, for example, the ideal location of heat pump chillers. (A rooftop gives them the required airflow, with added structural elements to support the increased weight.) What’s more, once these pools are built, they will provide ELS with invaluable data on ways to improve the accuracy of matching heating capacity with demand.
One of the most important factors for communities choosing to use all-electric designs is upfront cost. While long-term economic benefits are effectively proven for all ELS all-electric centers, cities must inevitably contend with bond measures or other fundraising methods to fund design and construction. Fortunately, in addition to costs decreasing through improving technology, state grant requirements are expected to evolve in accommodating aquatic centers. Cities must also admit that to stall on these changes is to ignore the health and climate costs associated with natural gas.
These three projects are part of a larger all-electric trend for ELS. Opening in Redwood City next year, there’s the Veterans Memorial Senior Center, which is targeting LEED Platinum and will have the capacity to convert to an off-grid emergency shelter during natural disasters. Outside the Bay Area, the firm is working with two Southern California communities (Santa Ana and Oxnard) on all-electric, zero-greenhouse gas aquatic centers. They’ve also worked closely with stakeholders in Portland, Oregon, on the design of an all-electric, LEED Gold-targeted aquatic center.
As public support deepens for electrification, it’s clear that ELS is ready to help towns and cities make the most of the opportunity before them, especially in an ever-evolving regulatory and technological environment. All-electric aquatic centers are a fascinating opportunity for municipal pools to become showcases for sustainability – in addition to all of their other benefits.
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