The AIA 2030 Commitment: The Right Baseline

We were stuck. If we were going to make the AIA 2030 Commitment work at Bergmeyer, we needed to know this Energy Use Intensity stuff cold. And we didn’t.

Dee, Bergmeyer’s LEED guru, was at the end of her very long rope. We signed the AIA 2030 Commitment and were beginning to collect Energy Use Intensity (EUI) data for our projects. Her first effort was to compare the energy use metrics of all our LEED Registered projects. But she saw no clear relationship between LEED Energy & Atmosphere points and target EUI. How could this be?

“See what you got us into?” she taunted me.

Remember that TV show “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire”? If you got stuck on a question you could do something they called “phone a friend”. One of the great things about the Boston Society of Architects is our huge network of professional friends. Some of them are engineers, too. We called Chris Schaffner (new LEED Fellow!) The Green Engineer, for help. Chris stopped by the office.

We talked baseline. The AIA 2030 Commitment asks us to compare our projects’ intended energy use to 2003 CBECS data. CBECS, the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey, prepared by the US Energy Information Agency, is a national sample survey that collects actual energy consumption data on privately owned commercial buildings. The energy use is expressed in kBtu/sf/yr and the AIA 2030 Commitment reporting tool has a pull-down menu with EUI’s by building type built right into it. Easy.

But comparing LEED Energy & Atmosphere points to CBECS Energy Use Intensity data is like comparing apples to pomegranates. LEED E&A points are a relative measure based on energy cost. EUI is an absolute measure based on intended energy use. Sure, there might be a rough correlation between the two, but there will always be “statistical outliers” (I love it when Chris talks like that). LEED E&A points vary depending on the cost of energy. EUI varies by fuel source: natural gas is a far more efficient fuel than electricity. That might be why our all-electric LEED Platinum building bombed when compared to CBECS metrics.

The answer? Use Energy Star “Target Finder”. Target Finder – which can also be used as a reference standard for AIA 2030 Commitment – takes the CBECS data and modifies it based on things like geographic location, hours of operation, and plug & appliance loads. Chris advised us to stick with Target Finder as a baseline and not beat ourselves up trying to reconcile things that were irreconcilable.  

Lesson: there really is a whole lot of variance in different approaches to establishing building energy use metrics. All those calculations are produced by people, and people have different opinions about what should be calculated and how. 

In the end, I think Chris enjoyed the conversation. “It’s good that you guys are doing this!” he said. ”It’s a lot more fun than work!” 

Shh. Don’t tell anyone . . .

The AIA 2030 Commitment: Does LEED Cut It?

Does a LEED Platinum building meet the AIA 2030 Commitment energy use reduction threshold? Does LEED “cut it”?

We got an e-mail from the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), the folks that review LEED submittals on behalf of the United States Green Building Council. It’s like getting your test results in the mail. Good news: your project has earned a LEED Platinum rating. Woo hoo! Applause all around, kudos to the Bergmeyer team.

But then, that nagging question arose. Bergmeyer had recently signed the AIA’s 2030 Commitment, a program to help architecture firms meet the fossil fuel reduction targets of Ed Mazria’s 2030 Challenge. How would this project measure up?

First, I confess to have eagerly consumed a lot of USGBC Kool-Aid in my days. You could call me an early adopter, having passed my LEED exam many years ago. I don’t believe that the USGBC has become a “shadow government” (although that phrase, coined by Michael Liu, AIA, is a great title for a provocative article about the USGBC in the Summer 2011 issue of “Architecture Boston”), nor do I think the allegations of false advertizing in the suit filed against the USGBC (and recently dismissed) are merited. On balance, the USGBC has irrefutably been a force for positive change.

But I also agree that the LEED Rating System needs regular updating, promotes checklist-thinking if misused, and has become a panacea for governments, building owners, and practitioners who don’t want to do the intellectual heavy lifting of approaching sustainability in holistic systems-thinking terms. And I believe honest folks at the USGBC might agree with me on those points.

That said, back to our Platinum project. A small built-to-suit commercial building, Project X maxed-out the LEED Optimize Energy Performance credits, the On-Site Renewable Energy Credits and the Green Power credits. A poster-child for high-performance building, right?

I tossed the question to Dee, our in-house LEED guru. What was this project’s energy use intensity, and how does it compare to the 2030 Commitment baseline? She was psyched to have an assignment that didn’t involve slogging through the LEED Online website, so she jumped on it.

The answer was surprising. The project’s modeled energy use intensity was 110 kBtu/sf/yr. Compared to the target energy use intensity of 98 kBtu/sf/yr, we were 12% over target! And that was before we applied the “60% better” rule for the 2030 Commitment – meaning we should be shooting for an EUI of 39! 

We achieved LEED Platinum Certification but we fell short of AIA 2030 Commitment standards.

Could this be right? (To be continued . . . )

(Note: Congratulations to Coldham & Hartman Architects of Amherst, Massachusetts for signing the Commitment!)