Can partial regional criteria (e.g. 85% regional) materials count towards regional multiplier?

Summer,

My understanding is that products must be 100% sourced (extracted, manufactured, purchased) within 100 miles to earn credit for being locally sourced. The reference guide does not provide any guidelines on how to award credit for partial compliance. 

Partial credit is allowed, see the intro section of the MR credit category of the v4 reference guide. The heading titled "Determining Material Contributions of an Assembly" should address your scenario.

You should be able to separate the costs of each material in the assembly and enter in the BPDO calculator separately, however if the cement is the only material that has recycled content (and it's not within 100miles), then the other materials (aggregate, sand) won't really apply to any category, thus not really but able to achieve regional status (unless the sand or aggregate has a CSR, or an EPD or take back program, or were reused materials etc). The cement has to be all or none since the BPDO calculator is a Y/N. Potentially you could calculate 85% of the cement cost and use that as your whole material cost in the materials tab and make a note in your narrative. Play around with the BPDO calculator, perhaps you can make it work! 

You should be able to separate the costs of each material in the assembly and enter in the BPDO calculator separately, however if the cement is the only material that has recycled content (and it's not within 100miles), then the other materials (aggregate, sand) won't really apply to any category, thus not really but able to achieve regional status (unless the sand or aggregate has a CSR, or an EPD or take back program, or were reused materials etc). The cement has to be all or none since the BPDO calculator is a Y/N. Potentially you could calculate 85% of the cement cost and use that as your whole material cost in the materials tab and make a note in your narrative. Play around with the BPDO calculator, perhaps you can make it work! 

I thought this would work too, but then why does the BPDO Calculator specifically ask if the "entire product" meets the regional criteria?

This is a great post Tracy! Thanks for pointing this out!!

I took a look at the BPDO calculator and it does ask "Does the entire product meet local criteria?".

Which may confuse, since it could be interpretted as 'the entire product' must meet the local criteria. 

But I believe it means that what is claimed to be 'Regional' must be extracted & manufactureed & distributed within 100 miles of the project site. 

That said, I have no idea how we would figure out the weight of the 'regional' parts of a product. From my experience, v4 put an end to looking for compliant regional materials. 

I have been using a homemade calculator rather than the USGBC one (lately I haven't even been able to use the usual steps to bypass the security restriction on the macros so I've given up...) and I think it would be easy enough to add a "% regional" column and see if USGBC accepts it. It's common enough to know that at least the recycled percentage is sourced locally for some products. 

That said, I've never actually tried to do this because as Dave said, I've basically written off the regional bonus as an option. Too high a standard for too little reward. 

When v4 rolled out there was a local workshop/event I was able to attend, and we were able to ask questions about the req's.  At that point many of us were complaining about the language change for Regional Materials and we expressed how it made it basically not-possible for ANY products to meet those requirements.  Ex:  Steel made from 99.95% recycled steel from local resources, but less than 1% is virgin material, so it kills the oportunity to claim regiona credit for the material.  They were unmoved and it appears they have yet to address this issue, even into v4.1 - which is really disappointing. 

Noone that I know of even considers or specifies regional materials as an important factor in LEED projects because of this.  Why add another challenge if it won't provide a benefit towards certification?  This credit in general has become more challenging in v4 and we don't achieve it nearly as often any more.

Hi all,

It's really unfortunate when a sustainable effort is completely disincentivized by the USGBC, and regional materials has become one of those issues. To shrink the boundary to 100 miles was probably enough on its own but to exacerbate that by requiring the product to have some other attribute first just puts a nail in the coffin. I gather by the initial limitation on enclosure materials that their focus was on materials like concrete and masonry. Materials that were naturally local and perhaps not otherwise perceived as sustainable. I still get clients who want to use local products, but we certainly don't encourage them to pursue the Sourcing credit. Which unfortunately also means no focus on FSC or recycled content or bio-based because they all live under that one untenable umbrella now. Perhaps v5 will find a better way.

Thinking about how recycled content and regional content are prescriptive stand-ins for reducing embodied carbon and increasing circularity - it would be great if these LEED metrics went away because we had better data and better industry practices all over to measure & achieve those things! On the flip side it's been very good to see that the LEED incentive for EPD's and demonstrating reductions in GWP is bringing about more & better documentation of products' carbon impact. But agreed that the disincentive for some of those efforts that are "better than nothing" has often left us with nothing, and that's been frustrating.