No cooling tower - ACP

Hi Charalampos,

This link explains the answer to your question: https://www.usgbc.org/help/what-difference-between-pilot-credit-and-pilo...

Best,

Ece Ersoz

Hi,

I have a question regarding this ACP, has anyone have any experience with this ACP No Cooling Tower in case the project is linked to a District Cooling Network (normally not eligible for this ACP) BUT the Disctrict Cooling Network does not rely on any wet or evaporative cooling tower ??? It seems a bit unfair not to be able to demonstrate the environmental benefit of not having cooling towers even when off-site (district cooling in Switzerland with lake/river/ground water source with only HEX and dry coolers ). I believe we are still not able to claim anything in LEED v4.1, as far as I understand the WE Section in LEED v4.1.

Thank you

Best,

Anne

Dear Anne,

I have, for Swedish projects, used v4.1 in one or two projects for DES and Cooling Tower. (My projects are v4, but I chose whatever I like from v4.1 on some credits). The only real problem for me has been that some projects have been too small (=not systems 7 or 8, which have to be over 5 floors or 14000 m2 or something like that). So they have not been able to take the credit. But for large projects it should be enough.

A line from correspondence with LEED Coaches: “To document compliance for projects connected to a district cooling system, the project team will be expected to provide a narrative describing how the system is operated, and specifically describing the district energy cooling equipment (including capacities, equipment type, etc.)”. So this is what we did, I helped the DES provider make a narrative.

Good luck!

Dear Maria

Thanks a lot for that. This is what I was looking for! I will get confirmation via our leed coach just to be sure. Our buiding is 50'000 m2, so we should be alright to include systems 7 or 8 in energy model baseline. The credit compliance text only states, that this credit is not possible for projects linked to District Cooling..which seemed unfair.

Best,

Anne

I completely agree! We have been “fighting” about this for a long time with the USGBC, and have gotten this far. I still want small projects to be included though. They have now included this in option 2 and 3 in v4.1: “Projects whose cooling is provided by district cooling systems are eligible to achieve Option 2 if the district cooling system complies with the above requirements.” Always a good start!

We have been doing the alternative compliance path for this credit on a couple of our LEED projects and it has been really useful. Will apply for it now on a campus project. 

Hi Charalampos,

Yes! It should achieve all 2 points as it is a Pilot Alternative Compliance Path. This was confusing for us at first too, but you can register the pilot credit either on LEED Online or through the registration form (depending on your project type) and it won't subtract you points from the Innovation Category. You can still apply to up to four other Pilot Credits.

Hope this was helpful.

Hi,

My project is warehouse and will be using VRF system. Will my project able to score the 'No Cooling tower' option? Since there will be no cooling tower used for air conditioning.