Sustainability, LEED and the role of Energy Monitoring
Why get started on a Green Building initiative?
Sustainability is increasingly an essential business strategy – for companies large and small. A Green Building can cut costs, create a healthy environment for workers or tenants, and enhance corporate image. Green Building certification can facilitate Green Leases in the highly competitive Class A office space market, and create the conditions to improve productivity or trim insurance costs.
Plus, individual state and cities are passing Green Building ordinances – Seattle’s new Energy Disclosure Ordinance, NYC’s PLANYC – Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, San Francisco’s SF Squared plan and CALGreen, to name a few. These programs will have compliance requirements and may well serve as the basis for new retrofit incentive programs.
The best known Green Building certification regime is U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program spanning an array of project types:
o New commercial construction and major renovation projects (LEED-NC)
o Existing building operations (LEED-EB)
o Commercial interiors projects (LEED-CI)
o Core and shell projects (LEED-CS)
o Homes (LEED-H)
o Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND)
Another Green Building program – Green Globes – is managed by The Green Building Initiative which rates buildings to promote environmentally friendly buildings. Then, there is the Department of Energy’s initiative for Net-Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB).
What’s the common thread? Each of these Green Building regimes require that building owners monitor, track and report resource utilization on an on-going basis – not just during a certification process.
What’s new in LEED Version 3?
Launched in April 2009, LEEDv3 prioritizes energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reductions:
- For the first time, owners must record energy usage, report it to the USGBC, and have a plan in place to improve energy savings.
- LEEDv3 also tightens the energy savings requirements to 10 percent over the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers standard for 2007 for new buildings, and 5 percent for renovations.
LEED’s new energy monitoring requirements are designed to identify when energy performance metrics fall out of compliance, so the problem can be addressed immediately. By requiring metering information, USGBC hopes to “educate building owners on how users of the building can impact its energy use and water consumption, to be sure the building is operating as it was designed to.”
How can Agilewaves help you meet LEEDv3 requirements?
Agilewaves can be essential to your sustainability initiatives, by providing an advanced building measurement foundation – one that supplies the rigorous metrics required by LEEDv3, and more.
There are four distinct ways that the Agilewaves’ Building Optimization System can help you meet LEED’s requirements by providing a robust building infrastructure:
1. Measurement & Verification is a key activity within the Energy and Atmosphere credits. By providing virtual submetering for energy and water use, along with the analytical tools to optimize performance continuously, Agilewaves can help you achieve immediate energy savings – often 20+% in the first year.
2. For Indoor Environmental Quality credits, Agilewaves’ installations can include IAQ, temperature and humidity sensors to provide readings which can be correlated with energy utilization. Lighting control systems can also be integrated into your Agilewaves building infrastructure.
3. Agilewaves can supply the data required for LEEDv3’s new performance reporting requirements, including carbon calculations. By seamlessly integrating into your current building operations, Agilewaves’ sensor network bridges existing building automation systems, smart meters and legacy equipment (that requires instrumentation) to create a single source of Green Building metrics.
4. By using an advanced, next-generation energy monitoring system, you may be eligible for Innovation credits.
Our tools are sophisticated, yet easy-to-use for sustainability practitioners, allowing them to track resource use in real-time, and at the same time, create the metrics required for LEEDv3 reporting.
Download the LEED-EB details.
Additional Information
Building Commissioning & Energy Monitoring
Net-Zero Energy Buildings
