18-0524 v3.1/Shared Use of Energy-Intensive Amenity Beyond Project Seeking Certification 3.x

QUESTION

Our project is an environmental science laboratory on a waterfront site. Because of the site's waterfront location, the laboratories have the opportunity to analyze water samples from the river. To facilitate study of the river, relatively energy-intensive pumping equipment will bring river water to land for experimentation and analysis in the building. This pumping equipment will be available to other campus laboratories to support ecological research efforts in laboratories beyond the scope of the project seeking certification.

To what extent will this project be required to offset the river water pumping equipment's energy use via on-site power generation? Per LBC requirements, the project will offset energy consumed from its own use of the river water pump, but it is unclear how to account for usage of this pumping equipment that is done by laboratories beyond the project seeking certification. Please provide direction for how the project team should account for shared usage of this amenity in the 06 Net Positive Energy imperative.

ANSWER

Projects that have shared amenities, such as pumps or PV arrays, may pro-rate the resources used for, or produced by, the LBC project during the performance period. The project will need to meter the energy use and show how the pro-rated calculation was determined (e.g. tracking hours of use, number of occupants or building area as relevant to the resource). In this case, tracking the gallons pumped for your project versus others, may be appropriate.

Note - Imperative I-16 Universal Access to Nature and Place (I-16) requires that team protect waterways, including stating that "no project may assume ownership of water ... or compromise the quality or quantity of water that flows downstream." (LBC 3.1 Standard p55). The team should avoid harming the river (e.g. removing nutrients, raising temperatures or adding toxins), and measures to protect the river will need to be documented for I-16 if the project is targeting that Imperative.