Wood Derived Fuel - Used in Home Fireplace

Mario - Please access http://www.leeduser.com/credit/NC-2009/MRc2?all-comments=true and search for the word "fuel" from your browser. There are several previous posts (specifically 3/14/14 from Kathryn West - http://www.leeduser.com/comment/redirect/48555) that might be of use to you. If you still have a question, please repost to this thread.

Mario - I don't have any personal experience with wood derived fuel as a waste diversion tactic. Nor have I ever included waste wood that is burned as diversion for MRc2 so I am not sure if GBCI will accept it. So when you first posted, I spent quite a bit of time trying to find a definition for wood-derived fuel and it is not in either the LEED v2009 or v4 Reference Guides. So then I looked in the LEED Interpretations and LI ID #1685 - http://www.usgbc.org/content/li-1685 - was the oldest one that was applicable to LEED-NC v2009. As Kathryn notes it is referring to a situation where wood is processed into a fuel that is used in industrial applications. It is not the same as wood waste that is burned in a home. I don't work on LEED for Homes projects so the LI that Kathryn cites (LI ID #2629 http://www.usgbc.org/content/li-2629) was new to me since it is from LEED for Homes. So while it is not listed as not LEED-NC, it is interesting that it specifically states that waste used at an industrial facility as Wood Derived Fuel can be counted at half its value towards diversion. The only other LI mentioning WDF is #5375 (http://www.usgbc.org/content/li-5375), which mentions MR TASC rulings that are in a spreadsheet of LEED for Homes CIRS that must have preceded the current Addenda Database. See www.usgbc.org/redirect.php?DocumentID=2903 for a download and look specifically at MR 03-28, which allows donated wood to count as diversion for LEED FOR HOMES. However, they draw a distinction between this donated wood that is burned and WDF (see MR 03-29). You may have found LI ID #10061, which states that "only wood derived fuel can contribute to MRc2 in this manner." (I think the "in this manner" refers to waste to energy in the inquiry so this doesn't seem applicable to your situation.) So, maybe we should not be calling your situation wood derived fuel because it's really just wood. I think you could argue that this wood is indeed being diverted from the landfill. The sticky part is that the wood is burned and the glossary states that an incinerator is a furnace or container for burning waste materials. And the glossary states that waste disposal eliminates waste by means of burial in a landfill, combustion in an incinerator, or any other way that is not recycling or reuse. Burning the wood is not recycling. Can you argue that burning the wood in home fireplaces is reuse? Not when you look at the definition of reuse in the glossary (Reuse returns materials to active use in the same or a related capacity as their original use, thus extending the lifetime of materials that would otherwise be discarded.) My advice to you would be to try and reach your CWM goal without including this wood as diversion (count it as waste) and see if you can get there. Although I hope if other LEEDusers have experience they will chime in.