Calum Thompson is ArchTam Buildings + Places’ Energy Planning Lead based in California. He leverages his extensive experience of buildings and infrastructure modeling to develop decarbonization and resilience plans for campuses and portfolios.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself – your role and career journey

I’ve been with ArchTam for 13 years based in the Orange County, New York and Edinburgh offices. I grew up in Scotland and from an early age I knew I wanted to do something with sustainability — something that would play a role in helping to fight climate change. I did a degree in enviro-mechanical engineering at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. After graduation, I volunteered with the organization Engineers Without Borders on a project in India to research the use of biogas to produce clean and accessible power in rural communities. When I got back, I started my first industry job as a sustainability master planner in London.

My first role at ArchTam, in 2010, involved developing Excel-based models for feasibility assessments of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects across facility portfolios such as cities and military campuses. This grew into developing larger, more sophisticated models that could evaluate a range of scenarios from the impact of policy on future carbon emissions, optimize the operation of battery storage systems, or create phased decarbonization roadmaps for entire building portfolios. These models now serve as the foundation for our Energy Planning team’s core services: the development of strategic decarbonization plans and data-driven energy system design.

2. Talk to us about a project that has impacted or been a major highlight of your career. How is it solving the challenges and issues our clients and communities are facing today?

I think most engineers love the projects that actually get built. I’ve spent 90 percent of my career in strategic planning or energy systems master planning, which can have long lead times and are often very different once (and if) they’re realized. I was fortunate enough to work on the design of National Western Center (NWC) district energy system in Denver. Completed in 2022, it’s currently the largest sewer heat recovery district energy system in North America.

My role in the project involved design conceptualization, feasibility assessment, and business case development of the system as part of the wider ArchTam design team. We used energy master planning as the basis of design and worked with engineers and experts across the world in areas such as sewer, water, heat recovery and wastewater systems to implement a decarbonized energy system by electrifying heating systems in cold environments. By taking advantage of the wastewater connection, providing more than 90 percent of the heating and cooling needed for the campus, the system avoids 2,600 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and over 15 million gallons of water per year. This project demonstrates one great way to solve the biggest pressing issue for mitigating ongoing emissions from our buildings — decarbonizing heat. 

3. Different sectors are at different stages of maturity when it comes to their energy transitions. How are we helping our clients implement decarbonization strategies and roadmaps to achieve their net zero goals?

Different sectors certainly vary and even within individual sectors, such as cities or higher education, there are wide variations to our clients’ readiness to act now. Some may not yet understand their existing energy performance or have established goals they’re working towards. Others have already implemented and are teaching us about how it can be done.   

One example is our recent work with the San Diego Gas and Electric facilities team. They had publicly announced a net zero target, but while they made great strides in the implementation of solar and established net zero requirements for new buildings, they didn’t know what else should be done and by when. In cases like this, we can help our clients to set their own vision — by educating stakeholders and conducting workshops to help them define their targets, strategies, and lay out the initial foundation to further quantify their current performance by reviewing their energy use data.

In addition to developing technical energy projects, we also help to identify organizational, educational, and financing strategies for our clients, developing a final action plan which is reflective of what is realistically achievable for that organization. Our role is to make each roadmap bespoke and unique to each individual client, empowering them to implement it successfully.

4. How do you utilize the latest technological advancements and strategies to help clients in different industries with their decarbonization efforts.

There are two primary ways that technology advancement impacts our work:

1. Using the right tools to support our work. Internally, we are constantly innovating to accelerate processes through data analytics and feasibility assessments, allowing us to do it more cost-effectively, easily, and robustly at an early stage. For instance, I led the development of Rosetta, a web-based analytics platform funded by ArchTam’s Global Challenge — a global employee ideation competition. It allows us to rapidly model energy demands of facility portfolios and the projects that can help meet the client’s carbon, cost and resilience goals. Like all the tools we develop, it’s about making smarter decisions faster. Externally, we support our clients to develop their own technological innovations. We are currently supporting a national lab to develop a new type of infrastructure planning model to understand the infrastructure implications of different planning scenarios, and to quantify and visualize the impacts on electrical infrastructure.

2. Understanding available emerging technologies. There’s currently a lot of innovation and development in energy systems for decarbonization including batteries, solar systems, heat pumps to hydrogen. Our responsibility is not only to understand the technologies and where they might apply, but also to know about procurement, market availability, performance, reliability, and associated components so we can accurately advise our clients on how to incorporate them most effectively.

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Grid updates

eVTOLs are fueled by electricity, requiring significant energy to be generated and transported to vertiports — the facilities that support eVTOLs operations — via the utility grid. With numerous gates, each capable of charging an eVTOL, a busy vertiport could potentially consume over 5 megawatts of power, akin to the demand of 6,000 homes.

To meet these new loads, utility companies may need to upgrade equipment and infrastructure, deploy smart grid technology to manage peak demands, and engage in planning for vertiport placement. Vertiport operators are looking at ways to minimize grid upgrade costs and placement restrictions through innovative operational strategies, and utility companies that actively participate in vertiport placement will be better prepared to manage these new loads.

Advancing synergies

In many parts of the country, commercial energy rates have a peak demand and an energy consumption component. This means that a large spike in electricity demand for just 15 minutes over a month raises the unit cost of energy for an otherwise low consumption facility. For a vertiport where aircraft “fuel” is electricity, demand spikes can be extremely high and without thoughtful management and planning, the demand charge for meeting these peaks could more than double energy costs.

Traditional aviation markets have shown that fuel costs can be a major obstacle during early roll-out phases, not to mention significantly impacting long-term operator success. Understanding how much and when energy will be consumed will help identify potential synergies to offset costs, such as providing charging opportunities to other industries like electric vehicles. By spreading the demand cost across users, vertiport operations can become substantially more cost-efficient.

Resilient energy infrastructure

For eVTOL operators, aircraft turnaround time will be a significant factor in viability. These aircrafts will carry only about six people at a time so, like the Formula One pit stop, getting in and out quickly by minimizing gate time will be essential for operators to make a profit. Charging speed is expected to have the greatest impact on gate time, so it will be critical to get the energy infrastructure right. This means balancing short-term charging infrastructure investments with the ability to support the market’s rapid innovation while future-proofing for likely medium- to long-term changes to the charging process.

Deploying a scalable strategy for energy usage allows a vertiport to support short-term and long-term charging needs. Such a strategy could include using energy storage to accommodate anticipated surge charging over short periods while also anticipating programmatic impacts that potential innovations and even alternative fuels introduce. A scalable energy usage strategy enables vertiports to support short-term, day-one charging needs as well as longer term operational growth without requiring excessive initial capital investment. Our energy infrastructure professionals can help clients gauge current and future needs, providing the essential agility, flexibility and scalability to adapt and evolve as the eVTOL industry matures.

For the future

The emergence of new and varied fuels for eVTOLs will add further complexity, demanding even more agility and flexibility in infrastructure planning. Currently, most eVTOLs are powered by electricity and have a battery on board for storage. As the industry evolves, operators may consider switching fuels — for example, using hydrogen for on-board fuel cells — which currently looks to be the most viable alternative to battery-based eVTOLs. Hydrogen power will likely reduce aircraft weight allowing for improved eVTOL range.

Green hydrogen, from renewable sources, could be generated off-site and transferred to vertiport storage tanks, similar to airport fuel tanks. As hydrogen infrastructure capabilities develop, it will become increasingly feasible to integrate hydrogen into a scalable vertiport. For the initial eVTOL network roll outs, this approach can be combined with limited electrical infrastructure investment with the capacity to feed an on-site electrolyzer and hydrogen storage/fueling system, supporting increased operations without significantly impacting the local electrical utility grid.

With a new aviation industry on the horizon, eVTOL operators and utility companies are considering innovative solutions to current energy challenges. Delivering answers that are scalable, forward thinking, flexible and agile will be key in delivering energy to these new aircrafts and, in turn, making eVOTLs viable and integral parts of our transportation future.  

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Promoting sustainability initiatives, reducing energy consumption and minimizing carbon footprints are vitally important objectives when designing for climate mitigation — even more so for college and university campuses that consume large amounts of natural resources and expel greenhouse gases (GHG).

The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) has always kept sustainability efforts at the forefront of their campus mission. In April 2021, the chancellor issued a call to climate action, which committed the university to achieving carbon neutrality by no later than 2050. We then partnered with CU Boulder to spearhead the development of the first campus-wide planning effort devoted to energy use and efficiency. The resultant Energy Master Plan (EMP)  details the campus’s energy vision and establishes an implementable roadmap to accomplish net-zero goals over the next 20 years.

The plan lays out the university’s strategic vision for energy infrastructure and operations to support emission reduction and resilience goals. The cumulative estimated energy cost savings from the implementation of this plan amount to more than US$50 million before 2035.

The strategies include implementing high-performance design codes and conservation measures along with continuous facility optimization, heating decarbonization, occupant engagement and renewable energy initiatives. Importantly, the EMP validates the campus’ GHG reduction goal of 50 percent by 2030 and a 30 percent decrease in energy use intensity of campus buildings by 2035.

A common challenge when planning for energy initiatives is access to reliable data. We addressed this issue at CU Boulder by modeling the expected energy loads based upon existing information collected from facility and occupancy data.Then we filled in gaps in the energy data set to get the most accurate baseline for analysis. The plan development utilized Rosetta, our web-based analytics platform, to facilitate a detailed modeling analysis in support of the goals and strategies in the EMP — a level of analysis that proved far more realistic and economical than using traditional energy modeling methods.

An EMP can be difficult to execute because it is typically a siloed, facilities-led effort. In the case of CU Boulder, we developed a strategy to solicit input from myriad stakeholders across the campus ecosystem. Our multifaceted outreach drew from areas as diverse as finance and athletics, and also sought broad input from the student body.

We fostered engagement by forming three distinct working groups. The Energy Master Plan Group was the centerpiece, built around a purpose of building consensus on the definition of energy resilience, setting goals and formulating an implementation road map along with two other working groups, the Energy Action Group and Campus Energy Teams. This collaborative, consensus-building approach resulted in a plan that is truly representative of a comprehensive strategy — recognizing the importance of each stakeholder’s role in the achievement of campus-wide goals.

The plan not only defines specific actions necessary to empower CU Boulder stakeholders, but it also maintains the legacy connections to ensure the measures laid out will remain at the forefront of future resiliency planning — which is critical in the rapidly changing environment of higher education. The adoption of the EMP ultimately reflects a commitment to good stewardship of the earth’s limited resources while providing economic, sustainable benefits to the CU Boulder campus.

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