It would not be acceptable to subtract the process energy consumption associated with labs and cleanrooms from the total building energy consumption for lab and cleanroom spaces that make up more then 15% of the building floor area. LEED-EB EAp2 is based on the underlying premise of the EnergyStar Portfolio Manager Tool of rating your entire building against other likewise building types and regional areas along a bell curve. Both EnergyStar Portfolio and LEED-EB EAp2 allow an exception to rating the entire building. This exemption addresses buildings that operate for one main purpose such as office space yet contain a very energy intensive function that takes up only a small percent of the total building floor space. The reasoning being that these buildings would be unfairly penalized when compared to other similar building types. One EnergyStar Portfolio example of this exemption is for facilities where a data center is less than 10% of the total floor space, but a much larger percent of the energy use. In these situations, it is acceptable to sub-meter all of the energy use for the data center and subtract the data center floor space and energy use from the numbers in Portfolio Manager. Effectively, this approach isolates and rates the Office portion of the building. This approach requires that you install sub-meters to capture the total annual energy use of the data center alone. If you are able to install sub-meters and subtract out this data center energy use, then you will be able to obtain a more accurate rating for your office. Similarly, another example is the LEED-EB EAp2 CIR ruling dated 4/23/07 that allows buildings to exclude the energy usage used by the labs and cleanrooms from the LEED scope by allowing the subtraction of energy consumption associated with labs and cleanrooms from the total building energy consumption as long as the lab and cleanroom spaces are sub-metered and do not make up more than 15% of the building floor area. The described situation in the submitted Credit Interpretation Request is different. In situations where a building has energy intensive cleanroom and lab spaces that constitute the majority of the square footage of the building, laboratory activities are the main building function, not office space. These buildings should only be compared to other laboratory buildings of similar function and regional area and should not be compared to other building types such as office space. Past LEED-EB certified laboratory buildings have earned EAp2 through the EAp2 Alternative Path: Option B Approach. This approach required an additional but not overly burdensome effort on the Applicant\'s parts to find the minimum three comparable buildings for the energy use calculations. The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Surveys (CBECS) also does contain data for lab buildings in their \'Other\' category. It is possible that the U.S DOE EIA CBECs program contains subset categories in their database under the Lab Building Category that could be obtained by CBECS program representatives for buildings with both labs and cleanrooms. An alternative approach for your laboratory building would be to use the Energy Benchmarking Tool available through Laboratories for the 21st Century (Labs21), which is a resource co-sponsored by the EPA and DOE for the design, construction, and operation of laboratories. The Energy Benchmarking Tool can be found here: http://www.labs21century.gov/toolkit/benchmarking.htm. Using the metrics provided by the tool, calculate your project\'s percent reduction in energy use compared to the benchmark. You can then calculate the corresponding number of LEED points.