1. The building is recertified on a two-year cycle using LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance.
2. The building provides energy and water usage data on an on-going basis annually.
3. The building owner signs a release that authorizes USGBC to access the building’s energy and water usage data directly from the building’s utility provider.
Currently, accessing energy and water usage data can be very difficult,
particularly without submetering. In addition, I would expect that
public utilities would be loathe to turn over water and energy usage
data to a third party. Finally, the turnover of operations in buildings
from owner to management company and in some cases to the tenants will
create layers of reporting and data gathering issues which are
intense. For example, a building is submetered to tenants.
What if one tenant chooses to report, and another does not?
The reporting issues go beyond the merely logistical. Ongoing
reporting and monitoring by the USGBC will create a new body of work
for an institution that has already come under fire due
to backlogs in certification. Not only will the USGBC's new
certifying sister agency have to certify new projects, but monitor old
ones ad infinitim. It will create additional issues for states and
municipalities that have incorporated LEED standards into their green
building regulations and incentives.
What happens to a 10-year
property tax abatement if the project loses its LEED certification
after two years due to failed energy savings? Additionally, as Chris
Cheatham points out, there are new legal liability issues which emerge, like risks of suit to architects and engineers. [See Cheatham's other recent posts on the subject here and here.]
All this is not to say that the USGBC should not incorporate ongoing
energy reporting into the LEED process. Like Chrome OS, the idea is a
good one. I believe that a green building that does not perform should
not be allowed to continue to benefit from the LEED moniker. There are
a few things which could make it work better:
1. Create differrent levels of certification as time elapses -- LEED at
construction, different from LEED at 5 (years) or LEED at 10 (years),
which reflects the ongoing achievement of green goals. This eliminates
the issue of "decertification", while providing ongoing incentive to
report and maintain buildings to the LEED standard.
2. Phase it in -- This ensures that the reporting
requirements can be complied with, and allows utilities and others to
come to grips with the concept of releasing to third parties energy
data. As it stands, projects registering for certification now must
comply.
How can you envision the reporting requirements working more effectively?
Shari Shapiro, J.D., LEED AP, is an associate with Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP in Philadelphia. Shari heads the company's green building initiative.
She also writes about green building and the law on her blog at http://www.greenbuildinglawblog.com, where this post originally appeared.
Leed V3 logo from USGBC.