BPA Open Community

Yesterday Yale Climate Connections published an outstanding interview with Kevin Kennedy, Director of Environmental Health at Children's Mercy Hospital Kansas City. We were honored by Kevin's callout of BPI's work, but even more excited to see this message reaching such a broad audience. 

Short excerpt below, click here for the whole thing!

YCC: What similarities do you see between energy-efficiency efforts and the environmental health program you provide?

Kennedy: The work the energy-efficiency industry does on homes is specifically improving the indoor environment of the home. It makes significant changes in how air flows and circulates through the house: where that air comes from and the quality of that air.

And we know that when a house is weatherized, when it's properly air-sealed and properly insulated, that significantly improves the comfort. It makes the indoor air temperature and humidity of the house easier to manage, eliminates temperature extremes. And the more comfortable people are in an indoor environment, the healthier they are, and there's certainly research to show that.

And then doing the insulation, the air sealing, gives anyone, any homeowner, better control of where the air in the house comes from. How much of that air passes through a filter? How much of that is circulated and evenly distributed through the house? I mean, that's really the goal is to improve the entire indoor environment of the home. So there's a lot of overlap.

YCC: Are people from the two disciplines beginning to work together? 

Kennedy: I've been an advocate and a champion for the importance of integrating healthy home work into energy-efficiency work. And I've been one of the leaders in helping develop new credentials and new certificates for energy efficiency folks [through the Building Performance Institute]. So we've been real advocates for getting that workforce trained to integrate healthy homes into their work.

So we've been involved for quite a while in trying to advocate that the people who do energy-efficiency work understand that the work they do has that kind of an impact on the indoor environment.

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/06/how-energy-efficiency-upgrades-can-improve-your-health/

------------------------------
Kelly Carey
Marketing and Communications Specialist
BPI
NY
------------------------------

Yes!  When I coordinated marketing for Energy Star Homes, I learned that fresh air is like water:  You want to control its placement and volume within a building.

Also a new report from LBL
Future of Energy Efficiency in Buildings: Drivers and Market Expectations – shows coordination with health and non-energy benefits as a rising focus:


------------------------------
Carol Harley
Communications Director
E4TheFuture
Framingham MA
774-777-5121
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-24-2022 08:53
From: Kelly Carey
Subject: Kevin Kennedy Talks Energy Efficient Homes in Yale Climate Connections

Yesterday Yale Climate Connections published an outstanding interview with Kevin Kennedy, Director of Environmental Health at Children's Mercy Hospital Kansas City. We were honored by Kevin's callout of BPI's work, but even more excited to see this message reaching such a broad audience. 

Short excerpt below, click here for the whole thing!

YCC: What similarities do you see between energy-efficiency efforts and the environmental health program you provide?

Kennedy: The work the energy-efficiency industry does on homes is specifically improving the indoor environment of the home. It makes significant changes in how air flows and circulates through the house: where that air comes from and the quality of that air.

And we know that when a house is weatherized, when it's properly air-sealed and properly insulated, that significantly improves the comfort. It makes the indoor air temperature and humidity of the house easier to manage, eliminates temperature extremes. And the more comfortable people are in an indoor environment, the healthier they are, and there's certainly research to show that.

And then doing the insulation, the air sealing, gives anyone, any homeowner, better control of where the air in the house comes from. How much of that air passes through a filter? How much of that is circulated and evenly distributed through the house? I mean, that's really the goal is to improve the entire indoor environment of the home. So there's a lot of overlap.

YCC: Are people from the two disciplines beginning to work together? 

Kennedy: I've been an advocate and a champion for the importance of integrating healthy home work into energy-efficiency work. And I've been one of the leaders in helping develop new credentials and new certificates for energy efficiency folks [through the Building Performance Institute]. So we've been real advocates for getting that workforce trained to integrate healthy homes into their work.

So we've been involved for quite a while in trying to advocate that the people who do energy-efficiency work understand that the work they do has that kind of an impact on the indoor environment.

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/06/how-energy-efficiency-upgrades-can-improve-your-health/

------------------------------
Kelly Carey
Marketing and Communications Specialist
BPI
NY
------------------------------