I work in Canada with the LEED Canada NC v1.0.
A steel stud supplier has provided multiple extraction locations and modes of transportation such as:
'ore came from Port, Quebec by rail and to hamilton, ontario by water and from hamilton to concord by truck.'
And three other sources with similar modes of transportation as outlined above.
How do I calculate this?
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Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11477 thumbs up
April 7, 2010 - 12:44 pm
Adolfo, there are a couple issues here. One is that you don't have to track how far the materials actually traveled, as long as they were extracted and manufactured within the 500-mile radius. Mode of transport also doesn't matter (although some would argue it should).Secondly, if the ore is coming from multiple sources, you would want to establish whether ALL of the manufacturing and extraction locations provided are within your 500-mile radius. If they are, then you can treat the steel studs as completely compliant with the credit, and use their total cost value in your calculations.If only a portion of the ore is regionally sourced, then if you could determine which percentages by weight came from where, then you could theoretically treat the studs as an assembly, and calculate them as being partially compliant with the credit. See our advice in the Checklists tab above about assemblies for more on this.
Keith Lindemulder
Environmental Business Development- LEED AP BD&CNucor Corporation
193 thumbs up
November 22, 2010 - 5:33 pm
Tristan, a couple points of clarification - Aldolfo said he's working under LEED Canada NC v1.0. The MR4 credit in that program has a couple options for materials that have traveled as far as 2400km (1,500 miles) provided they are shipped by water or rail. Link (page 60) - http://www.cagbc.org/uploads/FINAL_LEED%20CANADA-NC%201.0_Green%20Buildi...
In addition to the ore (virgin material) another significant source of raw materials would be scrap. While a default 25% scrap content is not included in the LEED Canada NC v1.0 program, the economics of steel production predicate that a good portion of the raw materials of new steel is scrap steel. That said, the origin of the scrap (scrap recycling center) can also be part of the calculation. Whether the steel producer can provide this information or not is the question.
We track the origin of all of our incoming scrap shipments to each of our mills. We have a 'scrap calculator' which can determine the percentage of scrap which was recovered from within the 500-mile radius of the project site. This ration can be applied to any products (or portion thereof) manufactured from this steel.
In short, the first litmus test is whether the location of final manufacturing is within 500 miles (or 1,500 miles per LEED Canada rules) of the project site. If so, then determine the percentage of value by determining the percentage of raw materials (ore or scrap) also from within that same radius.