Santa Ana Environmental Justice Innovation Zone
Innovative Housing Opportunities, Inc.
Recipient
Santa Ana, CA
Recipient Location
34th
Senate District
68th
Assembly District
$998,612
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
In collaboration with its many project partners, Innovative Housing Opportunities (IHO) completed its goal of designing a net zero mixed-use city hall in Santa Ana, California. The "Living Empowerment House" was a groundbreaking initiative to design the first zero-carbon, affordable, replicable, and equitable multi-family development for transactive energy. This project sought to unite residents, buildings, and businesses through interactive, people-powered technology that beckons the industry to create more connected energy communities.
To accomplish this, the architects, engineers, and energy program developers learned from in-depth community engagement to understand the everyday lives of the residents and the at-large community. Meetings with tenants in other IHO-owned properties were conducted to understand the likes and dislikes of building layouts, move-in orientations, and tenant support services needed for working families and formerly un-housed residents. Outcomes included designing a daycare facility, ample community spaces, and a focused program for teaching residents about energy usage via energy dashboards and tips, plus offering an electric vehicle car share program.
This project was part of the Energy Commission's Next EPIC Challenge design-build competition (GFO-20-305). A project video, which was highlighted in the CEC's annual EPIC Symposium, can be found at the link here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i67PbW85lk&list=PLIcSRKAeCVRjlZYqQRteN…
View Final ReportThe Issue
Innovative solutions and approaches are needed in the new construction sector to meet California's ambitious goals for tackling climate change and affordable housing. Specifically, designing zero carbon buildings that can provide affordable housing options is a critical challenge. While the cost for advanced clean energy technology is decreasing, significant cost barriers and knowledge gaps have prevented the widespread adoption of zero-carbon building design strategies and affordable housing developments. Specifically, creating a grid-interactive efficient building is possible, but creating a business case and operational model for providing grid services and tenant services simultaneously cannot be solved by any one team member alone. As we create sustainable solutions, the challenge is also to extend this knowledge to additional team members, primarily minority owned businesses as we create equitable opportunities for all stakeholders in design, construction, and occupancy of buildings.
Project Innovation
The Environmental Justice Innovation Zone project will be the design of a mixed-use development in the Santa Ana, California region. The design phase will utilize cutting-edge technologies, tools, and construction practices that offers affordable housing and zero carbon energy solutions. This will include economic analysis, conceptual drawings, performance modeling, and construction feasibility analysis. The goal of this project is to create decarbonization benefits in disadvantaged communities while providing affordable, reliable energy in a way that benefits both the public and the electricity grid.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
The vision for the project was to create decarbonization benefits in disadvantaged communities while providing affordable, reliable energy in a way that benefits both the public and the electricity grid. The project's goal was to demonstrate and quantify the benefits of aggregated assets in a flagship mixed-use multifamily development. This project design could lead to a scalable, decarbonization approach to solving environmental justice issues in the design, construction, and occupancy phases.
Affordability
Replicable models for planning, constructing and financing zero-carbon mixed use developments will help reduce costs for future developments.
Equity
The project provides all-electric, energy efficient, and grid-reliability innovations to tenants to income-qualified tenants.
Reliability
The project design could help increase greater electricity reliability by providing reductions in daily peak demand through on-site renewable energy coupled with energy storage.
Key Project Members
Rochelle Mills
Subrecipients
The Energy Coalition
Community Electricity
ForStrategy Consulting, Inc.
Studio OneEleven
Arup US, Inc.
Winston Engineering
Match Partners
Studio OneEleven
