The Department of Defense (DoD) ESTCP Program sought demonstration and validation efforts that improve resilience to climate change and related weather events impacting buildings and building components. Changes in weather patterns and conditions such as extreme temperatures, increased flooding, ice storms, high winds and wildfires have an impact on the building structure, energy load, and performance. The effects of the extreme conditions may cause building components, such as heating and cooling systems, and building materials to degrade more rapidly or fail prematurely. Phase 1 will consist of analysis to identify, characterize, and quantify the impact of extreme weather on DoD buildings and building components, and develop recommended approaches to mitigate the impacts. Recommendations that include technological solutions that address identified gaps in building and building component climate resilience, may be invited to submit Phase II proposals for demonstration projects following the completion of the Phase I efforts. Pre-proposals were requested for Phase 1 only.

Of particular interest were Phase I efforts that addressed the following:

• Assessment of the current condition of DoD owned and operated buildings and their components. Analysis of the rate of degradation and potential failure of the components under different extreme climatic conditions.
• Quantify risk and model the impact of extreme weather on building energy consumption, costs, performance, operation and maintenance, indoor air quality and life of the components.
• Efficient approaches to identifying, prioritizing, and implementing adaptation and mitigation measures that align with and leverage current facility investment mechanisms and auditing and commissioning processes.
• Improved understanding of design, operation, and maintenance changes needed to upgrade the buildings and building component efficiency and climate resilience.
• Suggest changes or updates needed to the existing policies, guidance, specifications, unified facility criteria and other guiding specifications to improve building and building component resilience to the effects of climate change.
• Identification of gaps in DoD data, information, or understanding of climate-related vulnerabilities to installation infrastructure and resulting impacts on mission readiness.

Funded projects will appear below as project overviews are posted to the website.

Outcomes from these evaluations on the impacts of extreme temperatures and climate change on buildings will assist DOD installations in their installation assessment and resilience planning activities and the development of installation plans, such as installation energy plans and installation resilience plans. The evaluations will inform updates needed to the building standards and policies to ensure continuity of operations under altered climate conditions.

Climate change and extreme weather already impacts DoD infrastructure and DoD’s ability to execute its mission as evidenced by a series of costly infrastructure losses. In 2019, a DoD survey of 79 installations found that about two-thirds are under threat of recurrent flooding and about half to drought or wildfires. DoD planners and managers suspect that the climate change impacts, such as increased extreme high temperature days will increase the load on the building cooling system, resulting in inefficient performance and higher rates of unit failure. As a result, an evaluation of climate change and extreme weather impacts to buildings and building components is required.

The pre-proposals shall follow the general instructions provided on the ESTCP website and should consider the following information:

• In the Technology Description section, proposers should provide information that generally describes their approach to identify, analyze, quantify, and measure the impact of extreme weather on DoD buildings and building components.
• In the Technical Approach section, proposers should provide sufficient detail that the technical approach to identify, analyze, quantify, and measure the impact of extreme weather on DoD buildings and building components can be clearly understood by the reader. No demonstration plan will be required for Phase 1 efforts.
• In the Expected Benefits section, a qualitative and semi-quantitative description of the expected benefit of the analysis should be included.
• The Technology Transfer section should discuss activities to engage with key stakeholders involved with potential Phase 2 development for military installations to facilitate information exchange and explore collaboration for a potential Phase 2 demonstration.