If you decide to conduct the audit through your current cleaning service provider or a third-party auditor, you are likely to incur costs that increase in proportion to your building's square footage and number of rooms.
Conducting an in-house audit requires staff time, and the feasibility of this depends on the size of your building. However, there should be no additional cost associated with this option.
Remember that either in-house staff or an outside auditor will have to take the time to train, conduct the audit, and compile results. You’ll still save money by not hiring an outside auditor to do all of these things.
If at least 20% of the cleaning equipment currently used in your project building does not comply with the criteria, you’ll have to purchase enough cleaning equipment to meet this benchmark by the end of the performance period in order to earn the credit. This can make the credit costly.
There are trade-offs with all refrigerants. R-410A, for example, has a lower refrigerant charge, defined as the ratio of refrigerant to gross cooling capacity, but it uses more energy which may increase operating energy costs and will have a negative impact on your compliance with EAc1: Optimize Energy Performance, and total energy use reduction for the project.
Because mechanical conditioning and ventilation represents a large portion of your building’s energy use, equipment—and consequently refrigerant—selection will affect your energy consumption and costs.
The lease or sale agreement may include a fixed utility rate such that energy-efficiency measures do not provide a direct payback to the client. In these cases, the tenant or buyer may want to renegotiate the lease with the landlord so that utilities are not included in the agreement and are paid directly by the tenant.
If you need to modify existing hardscapes to meet the prescriptive goals of the credit, you can face added costs.