I'm working on a residential building with about a dozen apartments and limited common area. The apartments have their own utility meters, sand ownership has no ability to read those meters (the public utility is very strict about privacy). Can we fulfill this credit by purchasing RECs that offset only the central owner meter? We know that it will be only a small percentage of the building's total usage, but we won't have any access to the residential meters.
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Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5870 thumbs up
December 19, 2023 - 4:14 pm
No. Credit compliance is determined by the results of the project's overall energy modeling results, so there is no need to be able to access the apartment meters for this credit. The bigger question is how will you meet the prerequisite for Building-Level Energy (and water) Metering? You need to meter the whole building or be able to aggegate meters to represent the whole building and report that data to USGBC.
Sustainability & Commissioning
2 thumbs up
December 19, 2023 - 5:19 pm
There is a master meter for prereq compliance, so that is covered. The issue is, since apartments are billed directly through the utility, there is no way to apply any RECs to their meters. So there is no way to achieve this credit then?
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5870 thumbs up
December 20, 2023 - 11:34 am
You don't apply RECs to meters. All you need is a contract for the REC purchase associated with the overall project. When purchasing RECs you typically do not go through the utility at all. Here is a list of companies that sell the RECs - https://www.green-e.org/certified-resources