3% allowance for non-certified wood?

Andres Schwarz

Principal

NRG-AR / Green Certification Consultants

LEEDuser Premium Member

6 thumbs up

April 17, 2016

I wonder if there is an implied allowance for non-certified wood. The Building Green article (https://www2.buildinggreen.com/article/leed-pilots-legal-wood-expansion-certified-wood) states that "All wood must be verified as legal". However, USGBC MRpc102 Calculator, in its Summary tab, states the following "[% Legal] must be 97% for certified value to count towards credit achievement". It seems that there is an implied 3% allowance for non-certified wood- which I find reasonable. Is this interpretation correct?

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brendan owens

svp

USGBC

LEEDuser Expert

77 thumbs up

Mon, 04/18/2016 - 15:42

Hi Andres - our intent with this pilot ACP is to test the idea of establishing a prerequisite around 100% verified legal wood. we don't know if 100% is possible so for the initial version of this calculator we've applied some learning about challenges around 100% thresholds - we've found that 100% thresholds can induce some project teams to round/massage numbers to hit the 100%. that's the rationale behind the current 97% calculator threshold. we've removed that note from the most current version of the calculator (to avoid the confusion you're pointing out) but the calculator still functions as it did. as this pilot test progresses we'll be reassessing the 100% vs. "nearly 100%" on an on-going basis based on project feedback.