Rating System

LEED O+M: Existing Buildings, LEED O+M: Existing Buildings

Rating System Version

v3 - LEED 2008, v3 - LEED 2009

Inquiry

Our EB O&M project is an academic department building on a university campus with activity areas for instruction and student/faculty work. Since this building type is not eligible for an Energy Star performance rating, our project must utilize the EAc1 Options B&C Calculator (v2) workbook to assess its performance relative to like buildings using data from the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS). The workbook requires entries of activity types but it does not include the "Other - Education - College/University (Campus-Level)" activity type available in Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Email correspondence with leedinfo@usgbc.org confirmed this as an intentional omission and noted the college/university buildings should be divided into the activity types available in the workbook. We interpret the appropriate activity area classification for our entire project to be "All Other - not classified" after determining the "Education- general" and "Office" activity types to be inappropriate for our instructional spaces and work spaces respectively. To support our determinations, here are two statements about the "Education- general" activity area and one about the "Office" activity area. Education Statement #1 - The underlying CBECS " Education" building data is not representative of college/university instructional spaces. The Department of Energy published CBECS national average source energy use intensity (EUI) of Education buildings is 170 kBtu/sf (http://www.EnergyStar.gov/ia/business/tools_resources/new_bldg_design/2003_CBECSPerformanceTargetsTable.pdf). The educational buildings in the survey have been subcategorized as 70% K-12, 8% College/University, 10% Preschool/Daycare, and 12% Other Education (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cbecs/pba99/education/education.html#Subcats). The education building data is so dominated by K-12 schools that the average can only be considered representative of K-12 schools. The composite education value of 170 kBtu/sf is nearly identical to the national average source EUI for K-12 schools of 169 kBtu/sf, as reported in the workbook. Considering the numerous energy intensity related differences between K-12 schools and college/university instructional spaces and the published national average source EUI for "Education - College/University (Campus-Level)" buildings at 280 kBtu/sf further confirms that the broad "Education" data in CBECS is not a reasonable benchmark for college/university instructional space. Education Statement #2 - The underlying CBECS "Education" building data is not utilized in the workbook. Specifically the "Education- general" activity type has an Adjusted National Average Source EUI of 115 kBtu/sf instead of the CBECS published National Average Source EUI value for "Education" of 170 kBtu/sf. Email correspondence with leedinfo@usgbc.org confirmed the change to this and two other activity types as intended to "keep the expected level of EAc1 points for these types consistent with expected level for other building activities". The workbook utilizes a single curve for all activity types to determine percentile performance based on the percentage of the national average source EUI for each activity type. Based on that curve, the adjustment to the national average moves the maximum source energy use intensity for "Education - general" activity areas to earn the required minimum 2 EAc1 points from 132 kBtu/sf to 89.2 kBtu/sf. Neither the decision to adjust the average rather than the curve nor the amount of adjustment has been justified. The expectation of points can only be made based on an expectation of the distribution profile and if that exists it should be used to develop an activity type specific percentile performance curve. Office Statement - The "Office" activity area type in this workbook is inappropriate for our college/university student/faculty workspaces in the same manner as Education Statement #1 above. Information on the CBECS building types published at (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cbecs/building_types.html) shows that buildings that were primarily classroom were considered "Education" buildings and therefore student/faculty workspaces within education buildings were not aggregated into the "Office" activity type data. We concur with the reference guide as its anticipates improvements to energy performance rating procedures. We look forward to refinement in this calculator workbook and industry wide for activity area types, percentile performance distributions, and normalizations of activity area values for climate, operating hours, etc. Assuming revisions to the calculator workbook will not be made in the very near term, we request confirmation that our entire project should be considered "All Other - not classified".