LEED v5 idea: Let's certify buildings, not intentions

My treatise will start with a rough translation of a 15^thc haiku:   outcome based standards are easy to imagine tough to implement   allow a way through renewable purchases to reduce peril     Overall I like what we are talking about as it puts the Energy back in Leadership in Energy + Environmental Design. (We should start calling it carbon, but LCED doesn’t roll off the toungue) I’d suggest re-weighting points to give 60 or so to energy/carbon, including embodied carbon. 20 points for embodied carbon reductions, 40 for operational carbon performance, including several points for refrigerant reductions (#1 in Drawdown). I’d propose we increase the number of carbon (formerly energy) points to 40 on a sliding scale which includes 6-10 for commissioning and other energy-related things that are not specifically energy reductions.   Outcome base certifications are crazy complex if one has to assign a score to them. I love outcome based in principle, and I like giving our clients a rope around our necks via LEED to deliver performance (but we don’t actually deliver performance unless DBOM – we simply provide tools to deliver performance). But USGBC or someone would have to think through some very complicated issues. I will attempt to attach a document that Vikram sent a few years ago on outcome based codes. Performance based requires a level of infrastructure that does not exist at scale. It could, but read on. Zero is easy to measure, but any other number requires buy-in on a baseline – it is CBECS-like or modeled (or something else?) – that is either dumb and inelastic or else highly complex and mimic the challenges that have spurred the need for this conversation, respectively. There are inherent changes that happen between the designed building that relies on hundreds of assumptions and the built and tenanted building that may include a different number of personnel, success in business leading to more hours worked or more staff, success in more meals served or more hours open, perhaps an under-tenanted building, multifamily being occupied by either wealthy (third-home) or poor (lots of people crowded into a space) or airbnb use, year over year weather patterns (HDD/CDD), more hospital beds being used or unused or more or less equipment being used more or less often than expected…the list that makes each building’s operation unique is nearly infinite. Each of these requires a change in the baseline building. Someone with authority to deny the client a LEED Platinum/Gold score needs to then negotiate with the owner/design team over discrepancies after a post-occupancy energy model is run to show why the discrepancies are reasonable…all of this AFTER a building is leased up based on promotion of said LEED rating.   So I’ve cooked up a proposed solution based on the way the 2030 code reads.   (It’s not a code, but that’s for another thread). Uner LEED< something like the 2030 Code would have more flexibility.   So if we have 40 points to work for operational carbon with from the above suggestion, we could do something like:

1. AEDG: up to 5 points, more for zero-energy AEDG plus potential for the other carbon points.
2. Carbon or Building Performance (Energy) Modeling: up to 15 points plus potential for the additional points.
3. Post-occupancy data collection: up to 40 points and allows pre- and post-occupancy purchasing of 2030 Code-quality new renewable energy PPA/credits to get up to 40 points if they want. First, the client/design team sets a goal, memorialized in the LEED scorecard submission. Let’s say they want 35 points, for example, which let’s say equates to an 80% reduction from ASHRAE 2016. They commit to actual performance that balances as-measured performance and the PPA. They design a building that is modeled to hit the 50% reduction and purchase renewable energy (per 2030 code) to get to 80%. During the performance period they find that they are only hitting 45% savings, which (let’s say) equates to 32 points. They are required to increase the PPA so they get all 35 points they had been targeting. This allows a LEED rating to be given on the same timeline as it is now, but with assurances that the performance (in terms of total carbon) will be as predicted. It also provides a financial incentive for measure performance. In a pure outcome based performance, if a company wants to move an additional 10% employees into a space when they take over the space, they would forfeit their performance and LEED score. With the PPA move they could simply pay a bit more and maintain their LEED score. While this seems very theoretical, I have a friend who worked on an outcome based project where this happened. My friend had to tell the client that they simply could not move additional staff into the space because the targets needed to be hit, which is obviously the wrong move on many levels.

  The 2030 code goal as I understand it is to require a minimum performance level and buy high quality renewable power for all other energy use such that all buildings are net zero. The hope is that new efficiency is balanced against the cost of renewables, creating a demand for new renewable energy. Design to meet ASHRAE 90.1 2016 (or higher standard), and then the owner signs a contract to buy PPA for renewable energy that meet the # of points determined by the LEED submittal. The PPA meets 2030 Code criteria to cover energy performance towards net zero (or another goal). You could still cap the performance at 15 for modeled/offsets and 40 for as-performing. The beauty of this is that it is goal-based; performance as designed is not required for certification, but there is money that would be paid (not a penalty, but a purchase!) if performance is not met. One could get all 40 points this way based on actual performance and PPA.   -Kjell

a baseline is not required when you do a ranking.  we don't need to say that this year's olympic gold medal winner is 27.5% fast than the winner from 1992.  databases can have projects as 'participants' that compete against each other. in each category the top performer gets the max points and the worst performer gets 0 and everyone in between is scaled. I'd love to see USGBC guide LEED into the 21st century of data and create tools like https://www.gapminder.org/tools/ and make the competition fun again.

While some building owners may want to "be in a competition", many do not.  I'm finding many that simply want a design and construction team that will follow an objective set of guidelines to deliver a building that is designed to be capable of performing in a high performance manner and that is built in a responsible manner.  They want the steps along the way to be understandable, documentable, and verifiable.  There have to be benchmarks and assumptions made during that process, and we all need to collectively agree on what's appropriate along the way to send a consistent message to the marketplace.  Too much "noise" just confuses everyone and stalls progress.

It is inherent that for something to be "high performance" it would need to be compared to it's peers.

Good discussion. The one tweek I would make to Kjell’s proposal is to break it in new buildings and existing buildings. For new buildings, make it 40 points for embodied carbon and 20 for operational carbon. For existing buildings make it 40 points for operational and 20 points of embodied. The numbers may be off but you get the idea. Larry Strain, FAIA LEED AP S I E G E L & S T R A I N A r c h i t e c t s 6201 Doyle Street, Emeryville, CA 94608 510.547.8092 x103 fax 510.547.2604 (Enter on 62nd Street) lstrain@siegelstrain.com www.siegelstrain.com