Green Space Preservation Is the following an acceptable as an innovation credit? INTENT: The East Campus Private Development Project (ECPDP) is currently being constructed on Oak Ridge National Laboratory\'s (ORNL) campus. The ECPD is to be built on an existing developed parking lot rather than on another greenfield site. At additional cost and effort, the design team has elected to construct the ECPDP over and around the existing ORELA 150 M Flight Tube facility (located partially underground) which will preserve approx. 5 acres of green space elsewhere on campus and reduce enviromental impact while at the same time preserving the existing ORELA Flight Tube facility and conserving technical resources. PURPOSE of the ORELA Facility: The ORELA is the only U.S. facility that can provide much of the neutron data needed by computational astrophysicists modeling the nuclear processes by which isotopes are synthesized in red giant stars and supernovae. Experimental equipment is placed in the flight stations, which are rooms approximately 500 ft2 located at the end of each flight tube. Because measurements are needed from varying distances, the loss of the 150-meter Flight Tube station would severely limit the value of the data from the entire ORELA facility, and thus the ECPDP would have been constructed elsewhere on campus.
There are two ways to earn an innovation credit: 1) greatly exceed the measurement thresholds already set forth in existing LEED credits, or 2) quantify and implement environmentally-friendly strategies that are not already addressed within the LEED Rating System. Site selection, development density and preserving green space on project sites are already addressed within the Sustainable Sites section of the Rating System, and therefore path 1 noted above would be the likely path for this inquiry to follow. While the intent of the plans for development might meet some of the existing Sustainable Sites credit requirements and the proposed strategy for development clearly tries to minimize development of greenfield sites, it does not appear that the proposed strategy exceeds the criteria outlined in any of the Sustainable Sites credits. Therefore, an innovation credit is not likely to be awarded based on the information provided in this CIR.