Carbon Offset Program

You are basically trying to make the case for equivalency with Green-e. So make that direct comparison to the specific elements of the Green-e standard as applicable. Also check the interpretations on this issue if you have not already done so.

Dear Juliana and LEED community, it seems that we are facing the same problem: our project has 19784 sf and the whole project is supplied with green power, and contracts last at least 2 years. When filling the template form of EAc4, our total green power purchased over a two year period sums up to 433200 kWh. We want to use Option 2 of EAc4. According to the reference guide this would be our two year-consumption per sf: 433200 kWh / 19784 sf = 21,9 kWh/sf. This should fulfill the requirements of an exemplary performance (which is a minimum of 16 kWh/sf over a two year period). However, the EAc4 template calculates differently: the last row of page one shows a two year consumption filled automatically by the template. In our case it shows 10.95 kWh/sf. As mentioned above, it should show 21,9 kWh/sf. We did the math over and over again, since we couldn't believe that the template might be wrong. Can you help us out on this? We need this EP for other projects and want to understand how much annual consumption of green power we actually need. We cannot believe that in our case we would have to purchase approx. 600000 kWh over a two year period (more than we need) in order to fulfill the credit's EP-requirements. Thanks in advance! Anke

Anke, Just to be sure you are in a CI forum and am not sure where some of your numbers are coming from. Maybe I am missing a Reference Guide change but mine reads that you need 8 kWh/sf yr to earn the credit and double that to earn EP. This translates to 16 kWh/sf for the credit and 32 kWh/sf for EP since the term is two years.