Meeting this prerequisite is easy for most buildings, particularly newer ones, but there are a few things keep in mind. You’ll need to inventory all of the refrigerant-containing equipment present in the building, including small supplemental AC units and other unitary cooling equipment. This can be a time-consuming process, especially if tenants have installed their own supplemental equipment. And, additional steps must be taken if your project includes CFC-based equipment.
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.
HCFCs and 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.
Economic Analysis
If you don’t have CFCs, you’re all set. If you do, you’ll need to conduct a cost-benefit analysis for replacing the equipment entirely or converting it to use a non-CFC refrigerant. These analyses typically show that neither replacement nor conversion are economically feasible (i.e., the simple payback for either is longer than 10 years). Even so, you still have to do the analysis to confirm that’s true for your specific systems.
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 make sure to manage the refrigerant according to the Clean Air Act and document that the refrigerant leakage has been kept to a minimum.
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.
What’s New in LEED v4.1
- No changes from v4
Should I upgrade?
This credit is unchanged from v4 so shouldn’t impact your choice of rating system.