I'm representing a building owner/Landlord who is building a new multi-tenant office building and planning a very large solar installation, targeting net zero electricity and LEED-CS Platinum. The leases are NNN, which makes financing the project challenging. If the Landlord charges the tenant for their usage, the income to them is taxed and the economics are not as good as if it was an Owner/User installation where the "income stream" is a stream of utility savings that are not taxed. Also, if there are periods of unexpected vacancy, the Owner will not have anyone reimbursing for the solar system.

So instead, the Owner/LL is considering pursuing the City's Feed-in-Tariff program (FIT). In the FIT scenario, the panels are wired so that 100% of the electricity goes straight to the grid and none of the solar generation offsets usage in the building. The City pays the Owner/LL $.16/kWh for 20 years (I believe the regular City rate is $.13-.14/kWh).

As I read the LEED Reference Guide for EAc2, it says "Renewable energy produced on-site and then sold to the grid is not eligible." Does the FIT program fall under this exclusion, meaning if the Owner chose to finance his solar system via the FIT program would he be ineligible for the 7 EAc2 points as well as ineligible for including the solar system in EAp2/EAc1??

If so, is there away around this? Can we just use the offset energy cost at the $.13-$1.4/kWh instead of the $.16/kwh that the City pays the Owner? Or, can the Owner purchase RECs equivalent to the size of the solar PV generation to offset the fact that 100% of the energy from the solar PV system goes straight to the grid?

Thank you,