I am trying to think through an alternative compliance. Please humor me.
So I am working on a building where the tenant owns and occupies the entire building. They are renovating 2 entire floors as part of their LEED project. If it goes well, they would like to use that as a template to renovate the rest of the floors, little by little and gain more LEED certifications. They do not have sub-meters installed to measure exactly how much electricity is used on the two floors being renovated.
Since they pay for all of the electricity in the building based on the building meter, would we be able to say that the tenant pays for the energy used and achieve 3 points for this credit? Obviously we would not have a lease agreement to upload, instead we would upload a statement that it is owner occupied.
Also, while they do not completely sub-meter the two floors, they do have a special sustainability dashboard, that monitors electricity from a campus of buildings and it can separate out this project building and show building occupants how much energy is being used compared to the previous year. It shows graphs of each fuel as well as a monthly graph of EUI for the current and previous year. It also graphs water consumption for the building. Could this gain us the other two points?
My thought is that the intent of the credit is satisfied - occupants pay for energy used and have a way of knowing how much energy is being used on a building level and can see the impact from one year to the next of any energy saving measures employed. Occupants are able to see consumption performance over time. The output of the dashboard is distributed to all occupants of the building.
You rely on LEEDuser. Can we rely on you?
LEEDuser is supported by our premium members, not by advertisers.
Go premium for
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5867 thumbs up
March 25, 2014 - 3:23 pm
Since the building is owner occupied there is no tenant really and installing additional metering makes no sense. The intent is to encourage tenants to have an incentive to address their energy and water use. This incentive already exists in this case. So they really are not doing anything as part of this CI project to address the issue further.
In my opinion what you suggest would not earn any of the points.
Christopher Schaffner
CEO & FounderThe Green Engineer
LEEDuser Expert
962 thumbs up
November 14, 2014 - 5:08 pm
I'm going to disagree with you here Marcus. If they fall under Case 1, they should get the three points for energy costs paid by the tenant.
We see this situation a lot on university campuses, where a single floor of a larger building is being renovated. I believe there is actually a ruling supporting this.
I agree that the dashboard is not a substitute for sub-metering, so they would not get the two other points.
Garrett Ferguson
Senior Sustainability ManagerJLL
10 thumbs up
June 13, 2016 - 12:07 pm
Does anyone know where the a ruling may make mention of a tenant owning the building? We have a project where the owner only finished out a portion of the building, which is pursuing certification. I've scoured the LEED interpretations and haven't found anything.
Thanks!
Christopher Schaffner
CEO & FounderThe Green Engineer
LEEDuser Expert
962 thumbs up
June 15, 2016 - 11:01 am
Not finding the ruling anywhere now, but our review comments said:
"If a LEED-CI project owner owns the building, pays the utility bills for the building, has installed energy meters for the building, and can determine the prorated portion for the LEED project, we do not require the project to install dedicated meters to measure the lighting, plug loads, and HVAC energy use within the project boundary. If the heating and cooling is provided from the central plant, since the building is owned by the same owner who pays all the energy bills, no separate prorated payment or submetering the thermal energy is required. "