Office Building Outside US

Omer, office buildings outside the U.S. can (and should) use Energy Star Portfolio Manager to benchmark their performance.

1. Do international projects still compare with the US average as their baseline EUI? It will not make any senses, so where can I adjust climate data to make sure its comparing with similar weather condition for an international project? 2. What if our building(11F total) has three floors unoccupied which means our total annual energy use will be a lot lower than 100% occupied? Can you deduct the gross floor area of these 3 floors from total building gross floor area?

Tristan - Do I understand correctly that office buildings outside the US can no longer use Portfolio Manager to benchmark and must now use the calculator? The October update and the current LEED On-line forms appear to indicate that Option 1 is no longer an option. I've just done a trial run with the calculator but it is telling me N/A. We're close to full points in Portfolio manager with an EUI of 214 but don't appear to meet the pre-requisite (under Option 1 of the calculator) because the adjusted national average for office space is 182. I suspect this is because the underground parking is included in my 214 but not in the 182.

Michael, That would make guaranteeing a Gold certification significantly harder wouldn't it? No worries, see the USGBC response to my query on the same issue below. "Good news. Looks like it was just a mix up. "Thanks for your question about EAp2 and EAc1 for EB projects outside of the U.S. The language stating that Case 1 was not available to projects outside of the U.S. was erroneously included in the Rating System with ACPs. The case IS available to projects outside of the U.S. and the box stating otherwise has been removed from the Rating System.""

For the full post you can go here - http://www.leeduser.com/topic/international-projects-alternative-compliance-path#comment-19012