This credit rewards projects that are able to minimize the impact of their refrigerants on the ozone layer and global warming.

Generally, the buildings that are most likely to meet this intent are those with non-CFC central cooling systems, such as a chilled water plant, where the refrigerant charge is low and the equipment life is long. These conditions yield a lower value from the credit calculation and offset smaller refrigerant-containing equipment that would otherwise cause the project to fall out of compliance with the credit threshold. If your building is in this category, it may make sense to pursue the credit.

However, teams should be aware that beyond the question of whether your building may or may not qualify, there is often a significant burden to collect the required information for each piece of refrigerant-containing equipment.

There is no allowance to exclude supplemental AC units and similar equipment, outside of the general LEED-EBOM allowance to exclude up to 10% of the building floor area if it is under separate management control. So, multitenant buildings may find this credit particularly onerous, and even buildings that have access to the equipment will still spend a significant amount of time tracking down the data points required to complete the calculations.

It’s an Accounting Credit

This credit is basically an accounting effort to document the refrigerants used in your base building systems, determine the efficiency, and calculate the overall environmental impact of those refrigerants in terms of ozone depletion and global warming potential. Performing the required calculations will give you a “Total Refrigerant Impact Per Ton” value. That value must be less than or equal to 100 in order to achieve this credit.

Well-managed buildings should be tracking most of this information already and will simply need to plug all of the data into the provided calculator to determine credit compliance.

Retrofits Unlikely

Projects that don’t qualify for this credit rarely undergo an HVAC retrofit to earn the credit, due to the costs involved. However, the criteria can be a good set of guidelines for future HVAC projects. Whether or not you are pursuing the credit, keep in mind the following principles:

• Ideal refrigerants strike a good balance between efficient operation, minimal ozone depletion potential, and minimal global warming potential.
• The best HVAC equipment is efficient, has low leakage rates, and has a long service life.
• Implementation of a refrigerant management program will help you to track and minimize refrigerant leakage over the life of the equipment.

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.