Non-Energy Star Rated Products

That's a good question, Matthew. At first blush, I'd say that you would be required to count the cost of those items in your overall cost of goods purchased during the performance period. It hasn't come up very often in the past, so I can't say for sure whether GBCI would agree with you if you wrote a narrative explaining why you excluded the purchase entirely. I'd say your best bet would be to send this question to GBCI's customer service via LEED Online and see what they say.

This is a question that's never really been definitively answered, and I'd love to hear what GBCI says about it. Risking Jason's enduring wrath, I'll say that my take is that you can exclude them - I just don't see how there is any sustainability benefit to including a product that isn't eligible for the relevant criteria. If the intent of the credit is to promote energy efficient products, penalizing you for purchasing something with no clearly-identified alternative doesn't really benefit anyone. Better to exclude it and focus on the choices at hand. The one alternative I would recommend would be trying to research microwave ovens to see if there is a way to identify more or less efficient models. If you can document that the ovens you purchased were similar to Energy Star in terms of their performance relative to conventional microwaves, I think that would be a sure-fire winning argument. Hope that helps. Dan