LEED Evolves to Capture Broader Base Pilot Project Participants Applaud Process
July, 2008

By Barbara Carss

The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) has set an ambitious goal for a 50% reduction in energy and water use in 100,000 industrial/commercial/institutional (ICI) buildings and 1 million homes by 2015. Canadian-made criteria for LEED certification are part of a new effort to upgrade the existing building stock and track the performance of both new and older buildings throughout their lifecycles. Hundreds of commercial, school and government buildings across the country are now part of a pilot project to establish baseline performance levels and gather feedback from building owners, managers and operators.
 
Representatives from three of the nine major real estate companies participating in the commercial building pilot project recently took part in a panel discussion at the inaugural CaGBC conference and trade show, held in Toronto in June. Anne Auger, the CaGBC's Vice President, and Gillian Henderson of Enerlife Consulting, who is program manager of the pilot, also outlined the process and some of its early outcomes thus far.

For developers and owners, LEED has rapidly become one of the most widely recognized ways to demonstrate their commitment to reduce the impact that new buildings make on the environment. It provides the basis for buildings that should deliver long-term operational cost savings through energy and water efficiency, while simultaneously meeting tenants' and/or shareholders' growing demands to address sustainability objectives.
 
Nevertheless, concerns have emerged about the LEED points system, the focus on achieving standards at a single point in time, and the complexity and cost of the required documentation. Certification is also largely based on a template developed in the United States that doesn't always account for differing conditions in Canada.

PROGRAM PACKAGE

The LEED Canada pilot project represents an opportunity for commercial building owners and managers to play a shaping role in a revised approach to certification. The pilot precedes the launch of a new LEED for Existing Buildings, Operations and Maintenance (EBOM) program slated for April 2009. The LEED Canada Initiative also includes plans for a revamped LEED for New Construction program, which is scheduled to be ready in September 2009, followed by a LEED for Neighbourhood Development program to be introduced in the winter of 2010.
 
"We really see LEED as the gold standard for green buildings," said Darryl Neate, the Manager of Sustainable Programs with Oxford Properties Group, which has 11 office towers in the commercial building pilot project. "The direction that the Canada Green Building Council is going in is something that is very encouraging as well."

The rating system - LEED certified, silver, gold and platinum - will remain in place, but the elements and weighting of the underlying point system will likely change and place greater emphasis on energy efficiency and climate change mitigation. Corresponding introduction of on-line reporting and third party certification is expected to streamline the documentation process and enhance the program's administrative capacity.

"We have to get from 800 buildings [currently LEED registered] to 100,000 buildings," Thomas Mueller, the President and CEO of the Canada Green Building Council, reminded attendees at the conference's opening session.
 
Beyond identifying applicable performance standards, the pilot projects aim to uncover education needs and best practices, and prepare participants for LEED certification. Participants are contributing to an on-line database of building performance measurements that reveal patterns and trends across the entire stock and provides a tool to compare the performance of individual buildings against each other, against average performance levels and against the proposed LEED standards.

INFORMED APPROACH

Panelists commended LEED EBOM's emphasis on metering, performance audits, retro-commissioning and follow-up action plans that target specific areas for improvement. "Trying to uncover the sources of savings leads you to understand the workings of your building very, very well," observed Harvey Barth, a Partner with Crown Realty Partners.
 
Investment in metering has yielded positive responses in Crown Realty's portfolio of 1970s and '80s era Class B office buildings when observers can easily see much energy is consumed. In one instance, a meter was installed in a highly visible location within a tenant's premises.
 
"When they leave at night they see how much power has been left on and is being wasted. They are going back and shutting things off," Barth recounted. "We are able to start modifying behaviour. We are also able to provide operators with a means that they can measure their own performance."
 
The pilot encourages comprehensive assessment of building systems and a team approach to achieving the LEED objectives. "We started to get our operators into a very disciplined mindset in terms of thinking green in everything they do in the future, and also getting them accustomed to the documentation required," reported Tom Kovendi, Director, Portfolio Operations, for Cadillac Fairview Corporation's Toronto office portfolio. "Retro-commissioning is key. We are learning through that process exactly how we are falling short in operating our buildings efficiently."
 
Audit results reveal a wide range of conditions among the participating buildings with some older buildings outperforming younger ones. There are also significant variations in the performance of systems within the same building.
  
"Among the best performers, there is a range of ages of buildings. There is a range of locations, and there is not necessarily a correlation between effective energy use and effective water use," Gillian Henderson noted.
 
To draw the fairest possible comparison, energy use figures were "normalized" or adjusted for various factors that influence energy demand in differing circumstances -flexibility that Kovendi suggested is missing in the US LEED criteria.

"One of the greatest challenges of achieving certification is bringing energy usage in line with prerequisite criteria," he maintained. "That was one of the reasons I fought for normalization because I believe there are older buildings that are at a disadvantage."

TECHNOLOGY MEETS PRACTICALITY

Existing buildings clearly present challenges and obstacles not found in new construction, both from a structural and cost perspective. "There are certain things that are very, very hard if not impossible to change," Barth asserted. "We have 35 to 40-year-old chillers that are working and nothing's wrong with them. Some of them are located 30 to 40 storeys up so it's not practical to change a piece of equipment that is generally working well."

Even so, upgrade solutions range from technically sophisticated and costly to simple and relatively cost-free. "About 30% of all energy use happens when there is nobody in the building. There is a big opportunity there to just keep encouraging people to turn things off," he said.
 
Elsewhere, technology and practicality blend to provide solutions. For example, Barth noted that some buildings waste energy on lighting because they have too many fixtures. "The good news is it's easy to do a lighting analysis. It's not enough just to do a lighting conversion. You have to look at lighting patterns," he advised.
 
Replacing T12 lighting is a crucial first step, but there are still more options that can be exploited in tandem with the more efficient T8 fixtures. Addressable and dimmable ballasts integrated with sensors and building controls now make it much easier to capitalize on natural light when and where it is available.
 
"You can adjust the lighting back and forth. It's all computer based," Barth explained. "It's now less than $6 to operate a fixture that we once spent close to $32 to operate for a year." In the future, LED lighting is likely to deliver still greater energy and cost savings.

ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

On the education and program delivery front, panelists uniformly pointed to the role that senior management has played in their companies' investments in building performance improvements and adoption of new policies and practices.

"It's significant cultural change and really changing the mindset of the organization," Neate said. "I think, fundamentally, the top-down approach is one that works and gets it done. Transformational changes are driven at a top-down level."

The pilot project is still open to new joiners, and current participants urge more companies to sign on. "Get involved because I think this is sort of a dry run for [LEED] accreditation," Kovendi recommended. "I think this is going to be the standard for A buildings in the future."

For more information, see the Canada Green Building Council web site at www.cagbc.org.