Do you have comments or questions on this draft? Discuss them below with your fellow LEED professionals. Substantive comments posted here during USGBC's second public comment period  will be submitted to USGBC and considered "official" public comments.

More information on LEED 2012 certification and the second public comment

Performance (PF)

As with the first draft, the second draft of LEED 2012 retains a new Performance section, which is a mix of new and old credits.

Major Changes

There are numerous specific changes to the new Water Metering prerequisite (required), but the gist remains the same: all water conveyed to the project—regardless of source—must be metered. Water consumption must also be submetered in five specific cases, with the common thread being applications using over 100,000 gallons annually, or 1,000 gallons daily in the case of process uses. Any reclaimed water source would also have to be metered. Finally, reporting of metering data, including submeters, to USGBC would be required for five years.

Advanced Water Metering (1 point) builds on the prerequisite, not only requiring metering but also that meters and submeters be able to report data remotely, and be part of a management system that tracks performance and generates alerts for leaks or operational anomalies. In a change since the first draft, this credit includes submetering requirements that had been part of the prerequisite, notably submetering for any freestanding building using over 100,000 gallons annually, submetering of any tenant space, submetering of HVAC systems, and submetering of ornamental water bodies.

Fundamental Commissioning and Verification, a prerequisite, was moved here from the EA section in the first LEED 2012 draft. As with that first draft, the detailed requirements have numerous changes. The changes most notably make the credit language here more simple and straightforward, although the requirements remain lengthy. For example, the “Building Envelope” is a required system in this draft—a big change from LEED 2009—but this is a change from the first draft, in which “roofing assemblies and systems” and  “thermal, air, and vapor transmission properties of walls, roofs, windows and doors” were required. How much these wording changes are just wording changes, and how much they reflect a change in scope, may not become clear until LEED 2012 documentation requirements are developed. “Plumbing” also falls under the prerequisite’s scope, a change from LEED 2009, which only required commissioning of domestic hot water systems.

Enhanced Commissioning (3 points) would get increase emphasis, getting one more point than in LEED 2009. Similarly to the changes under Fundamental Commissioning, the language of this credit is much simplified since the first draft, but it may not be clear until later in the development of LEED 2012 whether the scope is also simplified.

This draft adds a third commissioning item not seen in the first LEED 2012 draft: Monitoring Based Commissioning (1 point). This credit would require both Fundamental and Enhanced Commissioning as prerequisites, and in addition, would require the development of monitoring-based procedures to be incorporated into the commissioning scope. Among other things, the plan would require a list of points to be trended with associated frequency and duration for trending, and limits of acceptable values for tracked points.

After the Occupant Experience Survey credit replaced and greatly expanded upon the LEED 2009 Thermal Comfort—Verification credit, in the first LEED 2012 draft, this new draft eliminates the credit entirely. The first draft would have required surveying of not only thermal comfort, but also air quality, lighting quality, acoustics, building cleanliness and maintenance, ergonomics, and opportunities for improvement. Results would have been reported to USGBC.

Minor Changes

The new prerequisite, Building-Level Energy Metering, is not significantly changed from the first draft of LEED 2012. Among other things, this prerequisite inserts directly into the rating system what has in LEED 2009 been a requirement found in the Minimum Program Requirements: that projects share energy data with USGBC for at least five years.

Advanced Energy Metering (1 point) partly replaces the seldom-pursued LEED 2009 measurement and verification (M&V) credit (see below for the other part). It includes prescriptive and performance-based paths revolving around installing permanent meters for whole-building energy sources. The meters would have to record data at least hourly, transmit data remotely, and be integrated with a data storage and management system. The credit has been reorganized in this second draft, particularly in terms of which project types must follow which requirements, but its overall requirements are not significantly different.

Reconcile Design and Actual Energy Performance (1 point) essentially builds on the “verification” part of the LEED 2009 measurement and verification credit. An M&V plan would be required—as it is in LEED 2009—but the M&V provider would also have to “prepare and submit a final report to the project design team and the building owner that describes the M&V program and its outcomes,” including actual energy use compared to the projected use defined by the Optimize Energy Performance credit (EAc1). There are only minor wording revisions to this draft of the credit.

What do you think of the changes proposed for LEED 2012? Questions? Post your thoughts below.