If your building doesn’t have CFC refrigerants, or if they’re easily eliminated, then you’re in position to easily earn this prerequisite.

Even If your base building systems do use CFCs, you can still earn this prerequisite. You’ll need to either implement a five-year CFC phase-out plan or show that both conversion and replacement of your equipment is not economically feasible. 

How old is your equipment?

CFC production was banned in the U.S. in 1996, so although you should not rely on that date as a clear cutoff (because CFC-based equipment might still have been installed later), newer buildings are likely to find that meeting this prerequisite is very easy.

If your building dates from the mid-1990s or earlier, you can still earn this prerequisite, but probably will need to invest a bit more time in identifying and managing your refrigerants.

HCFCs, HFCs are okay

You can focus solely on CFC-based refrigerants for this prerequisite. A lot of project teams make the mistake of going through a lot of effort to deal with the HCFC and HFC-based refrigerants in their buildings, when in fact these are compliant and not addressed by this prerequisite. EAc5: Enhanced Refrigerant Management addresses the environmental impact of all refrigerants, so consider pursuing that credit, and save your effort for it. 

Identify your refrigerants

The first step is to identify all refrigerants in the building and determine whether you have CFCs or not. If you’re not sure which refrigerants are in your equipment, don’t assume. Go check the equipment nameplate or vendor documentation to confirm the refrigerant charge.

Economic analysis 

If you don’t have CFCs, you’re all set. If you do, you’ll probably want to perform an economic analysis. To avoid having to phase-out CFCs, the economic analysis must show that neither conversion nor replacement of CFC-based systems is feasible. However, because the LEED Reference Guide says to analyze conversion “and/or” replacement, many project teams don’t perform a complete analysis and fail to comply with the requirements.

The payback period indicated by the economic analysis will tell you whether you need to develop a phase-out plan or not. Per the LEED requirements, a simple payback of more than ten years on equipment replacement or conversion is not considered economically feasible. If your analysis indicates a payback of less than ten years, this is considered economically feasible and you must develop and implement a plan to phase-out CFCs within five years of the end of your performance period.

Reduce leakage

If CFC-based refrigerants are used in your building, you must also reduce annual leakage to 5% or less and reduce the total leakage over the remaining life of the unit to less than 30% of its refrigerant charge. To do this, you’ll need to implement a refrigerant management plan. 

Is the prerequisite cost-effective?

The cost of the prerequisite will depend on your initial refrigerant inventory and whether you determine that it is economically feasible to retrofit your CFC-based systems.

If your CFC-based equipment is nearing the end of its useful life, and will benefit from being replaced soon anyway, it is probably worthwhile to simply focus on a phase-out plan. This approach may be costly but is probably easy to justify in the context of capital investment and improved energy efficiency.

If your CFC-based equipment is relatively new, it may be worthwhile to conduct the economic analysis early in the project. The paybacks for upgrades to equipment in good condition are rarely favorable, so this analysis will probably show that it’s too expensive to retrofit your equipment, thus saving you the effort of developing a CFC phase-out plan for LEED purposes.

Consider these questions when approaching this credit

• Who is responsible for keeping records of all refrigerants used in base building systems?  (Designating a building refrigerant manager is a good practice.) Does any of your equipment use CFC-based refrigerants?
• What is the age and condition of the base building equipment that contains CFC-based refrigerants?  These are indicators that can help you to decide where to invest your time at the beginning of the prerequisite work. It may make more sense to phase out CFC-based refrigerants in equipment that has nearly reached the end of its useful life. Alternatively, if you have newer CFC-containing equipment, it may be better to perform the economic feasibility analysis to determine your compliance path.