I just finished importing my data from the EC into the online LEED LCA Credit calculator and have a few questions and observations that might be helpful for others pursuing the credit.
Q1. I noticed that the LEED LCA calculator does not have a place to input the impacts associated with foundations and footings. For our project this was about 10-15% of our impact. Why has this been omitted from the calculator?
Q2. The LEED calculator asks for Global Warming in “kg”. I assume that this is kg CO2e?
O1. If people are cutting and pasting from EC into the LEED calculator, as suggested on the “User Supplied Impact Data” page, they should be aware that the order of impacts is not the same. In the EC Resource use follows Primary Energy, while in the LEED calculator GWP immediately follows Primary Energy.
O2. The units are NOT the same for many of the inputs. For example EC v 3.5 provides Resource Use and GWP in tonnes, while the LEED input is in kg. Similarly Respiratory, Eutrophication, and Smog are all off by 10e3 between the data provided by the EC and the input requested by the LEED calculator.
Whit Faulconer
Director – LEED Technical DevelopmentUSGBC
51 thumbs up
September 29, 2010 - 12:43 pm
Hi Dirk,
Q1. I'm thinking that the exclusion of the foundations and footings is a result of the limitations of the initial versions of the EcoCalculator more than anything. The goal is to expand the assembly items and refine the level of detail around the building assemblies we are measuring, because as you note quite accurately, we're missing significant impact.
Q2. Yes
O1. Good eye, we can fix that
O2. I think we can fix that too!
Thanks Again Dirk for the careful and I'm sure time-consuming attention to detail for the benefit of this Pilot. -Whit