Hi,
We are evaluating the LEED certification potential of a new winery that will be built in Portugal (using the rating system LEED BD+C: New Construction and Major Renovation).
Main energy use in the winery will be for its specific equipment (e.g., refrigeration, mechanical loads transport systems, etc.). These equipment can represent up to 75% of the winery global energy use.
The question is: how can we calculate compliance with EA_C2 (Energy Performance) ? If we consider equal energy consumption for equipment in the baseline and in the proposed building, compliance is deeply penalized (we can only save energy in the remaining 25%). Suggestion: consider that winery equipment will only be responsible for 25% of global energy use in both baseline and proposed. This way, we are excluding the industrial process from our calculations and focus our attention in building related energy consumption, which seems acceptable because LEED is a certification scheme designed for buildings, not for industrial process.
Thanks for your attention. I’m looking forward to your reply.
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5907 thumbs up
November 6, 2018 - 12:38 pm
You comply by finding ways to reduce the energy consumption of the process load. This is documented through the exceptional calculation process. The hardest part is sometimes justifying the baseline you select which should be based on standard industry practice in the area of the project.
Your suggestion to arbitrarily include a 25% process load will not be acceptable. LEED requires that projects must include all energy use within and associated with the project. LEED is first and foremost a system to help projects to reduce their environmental impacts. Mother Earth does not care if the energy use comes from a building related end use or a process related end use. The environmental impacts are the same. So do something to address the process loads.
We have worked on several projects with high process loads and have been able to find significant savings in the process load every time.