The Office of Operations of this Federal Agency is currently procuring 10% of its electricity from Green-e certified renewable energy sources. Our electric purchases are through a GSA electric services contract with PEPCO Services. The contract term was modified to provide green power for 15 months (remainder of original contract term). The Office of Operations intends to renew the green power purchases if there are no substantial increases in cost or any policy changes that would discourage green power purchases. Because our electric meters are an aggregate of three entire buildings, there is no way to separate the portion of green power used by the current LEED-registered Phase of the South Building Modernization. The long-range goal is to LEED-certify the entire South Building, Phase by Phase. So far approximately 20% of the South Building has been or is in the process of being modernized. For accounting purposes, we are assuming that the green power is only going to those first three Phases of the South Building for which we are currently attempting LEED-certification.
To achieve this credit, LEED V2.0 requires that you purchase Green Power to meet the electric loads of the project, demonstrating a two-year commitment to do so. In this case you indicate that 10% of the power purchased is Green Power, but 20% of the building is trying to Certify to LEED. Since you cannot disaggregate the power loads of the individual project phases, it must be assumed that you are only supplying half of the Green Power that is necessary to meet the requirements of the credit. Furthermore, you have indicated that the commitment made by the owner to purchase Green Power only lasts 15 months, instead of the 2 years required by LEED. If you were purchasing a higher percentage of Green Power than required to make up the difference in length of contract, you might be able to make a case for equivalency. As it stands the project does not meet the requirements of this credit. Applicable internationally.