District Energy - 2011 4th Quarter

LEED® +
District Energy
USGBC Guide:

Accounting for district energy
in LEED-EBOM
Tim Griffin, PE, LEED AP, IDEA USGBC Liaison

Editor’s Note: “LEED® + District Energy”
is a quarterly column providing infor-
mation about the U.S. Green Building
Council’s LEED® rating system and how
it applies to buildings served by district
energy systems.
because there will be a return on their
investment in the form of increased rental
revenue or increased goodwill with various
stakeholders.
The USGBC owns these brands and
has worked hard to build their value. The
LEED-NC program has been wildly suc-
cessful. As of this past October, more than
1 billion sq ft of commercial space had
been LEED-certified – most of this through
LEED-NC, not LEED- EBOM. While the
power and value of the LEED-NC brand has
grown like Google’s IPO, the LEED-EBOM
brand has yet to become a major player.
As such, in the writing of both dis-
trict energy guidance documents there
appeared to be a desire to make pursu-
ing LEED-EBOM certification less onerous
than pursuing LEED-NC in an effort to
increase the EBOM rating system’s popu-
larity. Makes sense to me. If its popularity
increases, then the USGBC can continue to
raise the bar for future certification require-
ments in an effort to drive their sustain-
ability goals. One example of the difference
between the district energy guidance docu-
ments: The LEED-NC guide is 30 pages
long, while the LEED-EBOM guide is only
six pages.
For the past two years, I have often been asked by IDEA members, When will a guidance document for LEED-
EBOM be released? LEED-EBOM, which
stands for LEED® (Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design) for Existing
Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, is
the U.S. Green Building Council’s
(USGBC’s) green building certification pro-
gram for existing commercial and institu-
tional buildings that are not embarking on
a major renovation.
While relatively few colleges and
universities are attempting to certify
existing buildings through LEED-EBOM
– preferring instead to focus on new
construction – the program is rather
popular in larger municipalities. New York
City, for instance, has several buildings
that have obtained LEED certification
through the EBOM rating system.
District energy owners and opera-
tors in these municipalities are often
asked about the ramifications of pursuing
LEED certification for their building if it
receives district energy services. While a
district energy guidance document was
issued in March 2008 for buildings pursu-
ing certification under the LEED for New
Construction (LEED-NC) rating system (and
an updated LEED-NC guidance document
was released in August 2010), no such
guidance document existed for LEED-EBOM
until December 2010.

How Does It Look?
After working directly with the
USGBC’s district energy work group for the
past two years, I discovered some of the
logic behind their thinking on both LEED-
NC and LEED- EBOM. From a business
perspective, both these rating systems are
brands. Brands have both power and value.
As such, they must be built, nurtured and
protected if their power and value are to
be maintained or grown. Businesspeople
pay the cost in time and money to have
this brand associated with their facility
What Is the Same?
A good way to understand the LEED-
EBOM guide for district energy systems
is to compare it to the LEED-NC guide.
There are many similarities. In both NC
and EBOM, the only point category affect-
ed by the presence of a district energy
system is Energy & Atmosphere. Also,
both rating systems have three prereq-
uisites and six category credits (although
the numbering does not line up exactly
the same). The total points available under
Energy & Atmosphere represent a large
percentage of each overall rating system –
33 percent of the points in LEED-NC and
35 percent in LEED-EBOM.
Under Energy & Atmosphere, the
renewable energy credit is basically the
same in both rating systems. Both give
points to project buildings for any quali-
fied renewable energy consumed in their
district energy systems. For buildings con-
nected to such systems as District Energy
St. Paul and Seattle Steam, both of which
burn forestry wood waste, this is a signifi-
cant advantage.