WELL v2 Carbon Innovation Credits

Beth Lavelle

Senior Associate

SERA

LEEDuser Basic Member

0 thumbs up

April 20, 2023

Hi folks,

SERA is pursing WELL certification on our new office headquarters in Portland. We'd like to pursue their innovation credits on carbon disclosures and reductions since there are great synergies with our LBC and Zero Carbon certification pursuits. We’re finding the WELL requirements for carbon disclosures to be quite different from other certification systems, and are wondering if others have navigated this and might be willing to share lessons learned.

Specifically, the WELL credits require our carbon accounting to the audited “at least to the level of a Limited Assurance Agreement following ISAE 3410 standards.” Based on what we’ve researched, this seems to require finding an accounting consultant who knows how to do this. If anyone has experience to share this area, we’d much appreciate it! Thanks in advance!

-Beth Lavelle

SERA

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Mara Baum

Partner, Architecture & Sustainability

DIALOG

LEEDuser Premium Member

449 thumbs up

Sun, 04/30/2023 - 23:10

Hi Beth, My take on this is that IWBI is catering these types of innovation points to the WELL portfolio market, which they have focused heavily on in the last few years -- this language is geared to larger corporations. I would consider writing your own innovation point based on your approach and see if they're willing to work with you. DIALOG has been offseting our emissions for over a dozen years through Community Forests International, which is not audited to this standard. We recently made a decision to stay with them despite this because we appreciate (and have a lot of confidence in) their community-based forestry approach. We've lost points through various certification programs, but we're ok with that. Mara