Energy Star Target Finder Outside US?

Could anyone reply to the question asked above?

Also, I have not checked the target finder for my project. will it make any issues for LEED certification?

Please advise asap.  Thanks

There are many ways to determine an energy performance goal. Basically you are benchmarking your project against others. Your goal should be established based on actual building performance, not on simulation results. Target Finder is a tool which can be used for US based projects. For projects outside the US it can be used but I would take the results with a good deal of skepticism. You should also be looking at the data from local facilities. Obviously your goal should align with what would be considered an "energy efficient" building in your location. 

Technically you are required to establish this goal in order to earn any points related to the Optimize Energy Performance credit. You can meet this prerequisite without the goal but you can't earn any points for energy efficiency without it.

Has the USGBC stated what an alternative approach might be to the Energy Star Target finder for Projects outside the US ?  

International projects are not required to produce such a score. I am not aware on alternatives outside the US.

Dear All,

I found this forum and it was directly related to my concerns. I live and work in Caracas, Venezuela, in which I'm currently supporting the LEED CI-v4 application for a 16,000 sq ft office (a whole floor) for a financial international firm in a commercial building. In this case, for the EAp2 pre-requisite, we are aiming for option 2. I ran the Target Finder and I also get an "N/A" when ticking the "I don't have an energy estimate" box. Since we are in a design phase, we could estimate the annual energy use, but we have a tremendous problem with the energy rate (tariff).  Energy generation, transmission and distribution (electricity) is managed by the government, and it is 100% subsidized. Due to the chaos related to political and economic situation, currently it is impossible to know the price of a kWh, in fact, some times the agency is billing users and sometimes not. We could benchmark a price estimate with information from other commercial offices of similar energy consumption in the area, would this be correct? I must also explain, since it is subsidized, the cost of energy is really...insignificant when converted to USD, and we could always obtain a "N/A" when running the tool.

I believe the question remains...How can we attain this pre-requisite in these conditions? Should we explain that we may not be able to run the Target Finder tool properly in "special circumstances" box, and uploading the performance results sheet?  

Thank you very much for your time and advise.

JASP

Projects outside the US are not required to produce a Target Finder score. There are many ways to establish an energy performance goal. As you said you can benchmark against other office projects in the area, then establish a goal to use less than that benchmark.