Category Archives: green buildings

Energy and GHG emissions savings for U.S. LEED-certified Office buildings

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We have completed the largest peer-reviewed study of measured whole building energy use for LEED-certified commercial buildings ever published. Our paper, “Energy and Greenhouse Gas Savings for LEED-Certified U.S. Office Buildings” can be downloaded from the web site of the open access journal Energies. The abstract is found here.

Our study is based on public municipal building energy benchmarking data from 10 US cities for the year 2016. The entire dataset contains annual energy use and energy-related greenhouse gas emission for over 28,000 properties, of which about 4500 are classified as office. By cross-referencing the benchmarking data with the USGBC LEED Project Database we were able to identify 551 office buildings that were certified in LEED systems that address whole building energy use. These systems were LEED for New Construction (NC), Core & Shell (CS), and Existing Buildings (EB). We have compared the 2016 site energy, source energy, electric energy, non-electric energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission of these LEED-certified offices other offices in the same cities in order to understand energy savings associated with LEED certification.

In this post I will talk about the site energy savings observed for LEED offices.

LEED offices in every city were found to use less energy on-site than non-LEED offices, adjusting for size, of course. Except for Washington DC, however, the variability in LEED performance was so large that these savings were not statistically-significant at the usual, 95% confidence level. In aggregate, however, the savings were statistically significant. The results are shown in the figure below.

 

The red symbols indicate savings in site EUI by LEED office buildings relative to other office buildings in the same city. The error bars represent the 1-sigma standard errors in these savings. In aggregate (ALL CITIES) and in Washington DC the savings are two standard deviations or more above zero. In other cities the savings have larger error. In aggregate the LEED site energy savings is 8.5 kBtu/sf, which represents an 11% savings relative to the site EUI for non-LEED offices. These results are consistent with those we have reported earlier based on 2015 data for Chicago.

It should be noted that these savings are substantially lower than the 30-35% energy savings frequently asserted for LEED buildings – but are nonetheless positive and significant.

I will discuss savings in other metrics in upcoming posts.

 

 

LEED Platinum Hotel embodies the failings of LEED

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On March 14, 2019 the US Green Building Council (USGBC) finally awarded the Hotel at Oberlin its LEED-platinum rating after earning 81 points under the LEED NC v2009 system, just over the 80-point minimum required for the platinum rating.  This milestone comes as a relief to Oberlin College which has for three years falsely claimed the Hotel at Oberlin to be a LEED-platinum building.  But a good day for Oberlin College is a bad day for the US Green Building Council because there is nothing exemplary about the Hotel’s energy performance — it is the very definition of mediocrity.  This latest member of the elite club of LEED-platinum hotels – I think it is the fifth such hotel in the U.S. – uses more energy per square foot than do 75% of other U.S. hotels and uses more natural gas than any other Oberlin College building except its Science Center.

The design team for the Hotel at Oberlin projected that it would annually use 1.43 million kWh of electric energy and 8,350 therms of natural gas.  These energy projections, if realized, would correspond to a site EUI of 56 kBtu/sf and a source EUI of 151 kBtu/sf.  The LEED Scorecard for the building shows that the USGBC awarded the building the maximum possible points for energy efficiency –19 out of 19 possible.

Had the Hotel achieved this projected target energy, however, it would not be an impressive accomplishment.  This target site EUI is still higher than that of 25% of the estimated 30,000 U.S. Hotels  We know about energy use by U.S. Hotels from the 2012 Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS).  The graph below shows the SiteEUI distribution for U.S. Hotels as determined from this survey.  It is clear that the projected site EUI use for the Hotel at Oberlin is lower than 75% of these hotels.  A similar statement can be made about the projected source EUI for the hotel.

More importantly, the Hotel at Oberlin has never achieved this projected energy use figure.  Since opening nearly three years ago the natural gas use has been 4-6 times higher than projected by its design team!  For the last 12 months the electric and natural gas use have been 1,680,000 kWh and 48,000 therms, respectively.  These correspond to annual site and source EUI of 104 and 215 kBtu/sf, respectively.  The graph below shows that this SiteEUI for the Hotel at Oberlin is higher than that of 75% or 22,500 of U.S. Hotels. The energy performance of this LEED Platinum Hotel is worse than mediocre.

The bottom line is that the Hotel at Oberlin, one of only five LEED-platinum hotels in the US, has energy use that is typical of U.S. Hotels — near the middle of the distribution.  There is nothing noteworthy or remarkable about its energy use, either site or source.  Its certification as one of the nation’s most energy-efficient hotels is simply an embarrassment to the USGBC.  It illustrates how meaningless energy efficiency points are for LEED certification.

Harvard Group publishes flawed estimate of the environmental benefits of green buildings

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Late last year a group from Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health published a paper entitled, “Energy savings, emission reductions, and health co-benefits of the green building movement” in Nature’s Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology.  In their paper MacNaughton, Cao, Buonocore, Cedeno-Laurent, Spengler, Bernstein, and Allen consider the cumulative energy savings of some 20,000 commercial buildings, world-wide, that have been certified under the U. S. Green Building Counci’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) since the program’s inception.  Their focus is to calculate environmental co-benefits associated with this (assumed) energy savings.  Unfortunately their entire thesis is predicated on assumptions that are not supported by facts.  Their paper, masquerading as a peer-reviewed journal article, is little more than a marketing brochure for the USGBC and is devoid of credibility.

MacNaughton et al. make the naive assumption that LEED-certified buildings demonstrate, year after year, the energy savings their design teams predicted during the certification process.  This was essentially the same assumption that underpinned the now-discredited Kats report from 2003.  Numerous studies have shown that buildings in general, and green buildings in particular, use significantly more energy than predicted by their design teams.  This so-called “building performance energy gap” is pervasive and well-documented.  The Harvard paper is entirely based on the results of the 2008 NBI study which has long been discredited.

Frankly these energy-performance assumptions are sophomoric.  The authors cite only three references to support their assumptions — all published a decade ago — and they misrepresent the results of one of these papers — I know, because I wrote it!  They apparently are unaware of upwards of 12 studies published in the last decade that look  at energy performance of LEED buildings.

The Harvard paper should have been rejected in the review process.  If I were at liberty to do so I would publish the reviews of my critique as they affirm essentially all the claims I have made.  One of the Harvard authors served on the Board of the USGBC which should have raised a red flag.  The paper was received by the Journal on October 12, 2017 and accepted for publication five days later.  This accelerated time frame raises questions about the substance of the peer-review process.  And finally, the authors make several factual claims about LEED buildings in their paper that are simply incorrect.

To their credit the editors of this Nature journal allowed me to submit and publish a critique of this Harvard paper.  My paper is entitled, “A critical look at ‘Energy savings, emissions reductions, and health co-benefits of the green building movement.'”  Interested readers should read my critique of the Harvard paper which contains numerous references and relevant facts.

 

2015 Benchmarking data show LEED-certified buildings in Chicago save no primary energy

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As more and more building energy data become available a consistent picture is emerging that shows that LEED-certified buildings use no less primary energy than other buildings.  The latest contribution in this area is a paper soon to be published in Energy and Buildings entitled, “Energy Performance of LEED-Certified Buildings from 2015 Chicago Benchmarking Data.”  This paper compares the annual energy use and green house gas emission for some 130 LEED-certified commercial buildings in Chicago with that of other Chicago buildings in 2015.  Chicago, it turns out, has one of the highest rates of LEED-certification among major U.S. cities.

The data clearly show that the source energy used by LEED-certified offices, K-12 Schools, and multifamily housing is no less than that used by other similar Chicago buildings.  In the case of K-12 Schools, LEED-certified schools actually use 17% more source energy than other schools!

Many studies that address building energy use only discuss energy used on site, called site energy.  We found that LEED-certified buildings in Chicago use about 10% less energy on site than do other similar buildings.  No doubt green building advocates will emphasize this apparent energy savings.

But energy used on site – called site energy – is only part of the story.  Site energy fails to account for the off-site losses incurred in producing the energy and delivering it to the building – particularly important for electric energy that, on average, is generated and distributed with 33% efficiency.  The EPA defines source energy to account for both on- and off-site energy consumption associated with a building; building Energy Star scores are based on source energy consumption.  The issue is similar to one encountered when comparing the environmental impact of electric vehicles with internal combustion vehicles — you must trace the energy back to the electric power sector.

How is it that LEED buildings use less energy on-site than other buildings while consuming more source energy?  Simple — more of their (indirect) energy use occurs off-site in the electric power sector.  They use less natural gas but more electric energy than other buildings.  Essentially a larger fraction of their energy use occurs off-site in the electric power sector.

This is the trend in newer buildings, to use more electric energy and less natural gas or district heat energy.  Part of this is convenience and part of it is driven by the belief, or rather hope, that the electric power sector will soon be dominated by renewable energy.  It is true that the contribution of renewable energy (solar, wind, etc.) in the electric power sector is growing, but this is a very slow process and, for many years to come, natural gas and even coal will remain the dominant source for electricity.

This trend is not unique to LEED buildings — it is present in all new buildings.  When you compare Chicago’s LEED buildings with other Chicago buildings of similar vintage you find that they use similar site and source energy.

Bottom line, 2015 Chicago data show that LEED-certified buildings are not providing any significant reduction in energy use or GHG emission.

These results are similar to those observed earlier for LEED-certified buildings in NYC.

Hotel at Oberlin — poster child for “Green Wash”

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In May 2016 Oberlin College opened its newly constructed Hotel at Oberlin.  The New York Times ranked the Hotel third in its list of 5 Hotels and 5 Tours for the Eco-conciousTraveler.  It is all part of the ongoing marketing effort to paint Oberlin College as a sustainable and green institution.  Hard to believe that any amount of eco-spin can convince people that a view of Oberlin’s Tappan Square is  environmentally rewarding.

Of course what makes the Hotel at Oberlin a green destination is not it surroundings — it is the building itself.  Like the Taj Mahal, committed environmentalists will simply swoon in the presence of this green wonder.  The second (and larger) of Oberlin College’s highly-publicized green buildings, the College has claimed that the Hotel is the first 100% solar powered hotel in the world and one of only five Hotels in the world to win the coveted LEED Platinum rating.  In addition to claims of solar power the building is said to be heated by a geothermal well field and to include other green technologies — including radiant-cooled rooms.  Its web site boldly claims that it has achieved the LEED platinum rating.

Truth is the hotel is not powered by the sun nor is it LEED-certified at any level.

I  wrote about this Hotel nearly two years ago when it opened.  The main focus of that post was to address the solar claim.  I will not rehash the evidence here — please read the blog.  The claim is a brazen and clever lie — Donald Trump would admire its creativity!  Simply stated, the Hotel is no more solar powered than is my century-old home.  There is not one solar panel on the building site.  The 2.2 MW OSSO array that is claimed to power the Hotel was built years before the hotel, is located a mile away, and, by contract, sends all of its electricity to the City of Oberlin until 2037 at a price of $85/MWh.

Today I write to share the Hotel’s energy-performance data and to discuss its LEED rating.  The Hotel is well into its second year of operation and we now have 21 months of utility data.

In my 2016 post I suggested that the Hotel would use two million kWh annually, more than double the 800,000 kWh used by the Oberlin Inn it replaced.  For 2017 the Hotel actually used 1,400,000 kWh of electric energy.  This is 75% more electric energy than was used by the former Oberlin Inn, but less than my estimate.  It is consistent with the annual electric use projected for the Hotel by its design team.

But the Hotel also uses natural gas.  The marketing literature for the Hotel says that the building is heated with ground-source heat pumps.  Natural gas, we are told, is primarily for heating domestic water (laundry, showers, etc.) — available, but not anticipated for backup heat.  The design team projected the annual gas use to be 8,350 therms (Ccf).

In fact, for 2017 the Hotel at Oberlin used 39,000 therms (Ccf), nearly 5X that predicted by the design team.  This is more natural gas than is used by any other Oberlin College building save one — the 130,000 sf Science Center!  The Science Center, constructed 17 years ago, contains numerous research and teaching laboratories and chemical hoods and has never been described as a green building.  It used 58,000 therm of natural gas in FY2017.  The natural gas use of the Hotel at Oberlin exceeds that of any other College building including the Firelands Dormitory (26,000 therm), the new Austin E. Knowlton complex (26,000 therms) and Stevenson Dining Hall (23,000 therms).

How does the Hotel at Oberlin’s energy performance compare with that of other hotels?  Consider its Energy Star score.  This can be estimated using the EPA’s Target Finder web site that allows quick data entry to estimate scores.  Entering the Hotel’s floor area (103,000 sf), number of guest rooms (70), cooking facility (Yes), 100% of the space heated and cooled, and actual FY2017 energy use, and accepting other default parameters, the Hotel at Oberlin is awarded an Energy Star score of 56.  According to the EPA — just a bit above average.  Don’t get me wrong — I am a huge critic of the Energy Star benchmarking score.  But it is one way to compare energy use with other hotels.

The monthly gas usage for the Hotel at Oberlin is shown below.  The excessive use in months Nov. – Feb. is clear evidence that significant gas is used for heating.  But even if you eliminate this heating use, the remaining use is nearly 3X the design estimate.

Finally, let me address the claim that the Hotel at Oberlin is certified LEED Platinum.  It simply is a lie.  I downloaded the USGBC LEED project database today.  The Hotel at Oberlin was registered on March 8, 2013 as “Confidential.”  Its LEED project ID is 1000031165.  As of today, February 23, 2017 the Hotel at Oberlin is not LEED-certified at any level.  The LEED project database says it has achieved 53 points — not enough to even achieve certification at even the Gold level.

Perhaps one day the claims being made for the Hotel at Oberlin will become true.  There is a lesson to be learned by looking at Oberlin’s Green building, generation-I, the Adam Joseph Lewis Center.

Oberlin College’s Adam Joseph Lewis Center  opened in 2000 to much acclaim.  Its proponents claimed it was a zero energy building (ZEB) for more than a decade when it just wasn’t true.  The claims were repeated by two Oberlin College presidents, College literature, and the College web site. The College never issued a retraction — it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct flaws in the building’s HVAC design hoping to lower building energy use to a level that could be met by its 45 kW rooftop PV array.  The College eventually switched from “sticks” to “carrots” and in 2006, with the gift of a million dollars, built a second, 100 kW PV array over the adjacent parking lot and, with tripled electric production, renewed its ZEB claim for the building.  The building continued to use more energy than all of its arrays generated through 2011.  Even when faced with incontrovertible evidence that the claim was false the College continued to print the claim for another year in admissions literature distributed to students.  The College has never issued a public retraction or correction.  In 2012, after hiring a full-time building manager, the building finally used less energy that year than its PV arrays generated.  These arrays now feed two buildings, the AJLC and its adjacent annex.  Energy-intensive functions have been located in the annex and, collectively, these two buildings use more energy than the arrays produce.

Maybe in the next decade the College will build a parking garage next to the Hotel at Oberlin and put a huge PV array on it.  This could make the Hotel at Oberlin solar-powered — but not 100%.  Not sure how it will solve its natural gas problem — but clever minds will think of something.

The era of Donald Trump is here.  It is not illegal to lie, and no lie is too big to sell.

The bottom line is this.  The Hotel at Oberlin is just a normal, expensive hotel that purchases both electricity and natural gas from the local utility companies.  It uses more energy than the hotel it replaced.  It is the perfect symbol of modern green wash — 20 % substance, 60% exaggeration, 20% lies.

When will the USGBC come clean about their energy data?

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Ever since the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) certified its first LEED building, questions have been raised as to whether LEED-certified buildings actually save energy.  For years LEED proponents have attempted to answer these questions by putting forward energy simulations — calculations performed by the design team before a building is ever constructed (or renovated) that demonstrate how much energy the proposed building design should save.

The problem is that intentions do not equal performance, and numerous studies of buildings have demonstrated a wide gap between the actual measured energy performance of a building and its design simulations.

I have undertaken several studies that compare the energy performance of LEED-certified buildings with other, similar buildings.  One of the key barriers to such studies is the difficulty in obtaining measured energy performance data for LEED-certified buildings.  Municipal energy benchmarking disclosure laws are beginning to crack this “green wall of silence” but, even so, you will find energy data for only a few hundred LEED-certified buildings in the literature.

One of my regular end-of-the-year rituals is to download the current version of the LEED Project Database posted by the USGBC.  This database lists all registered LEED projects, including information about the LEED system, certification, number of points received, etc.  Below I will share some interesting statistics calculated for these data.

As of December 26, 2017, there are 23,137 LEED-certified commercial buildings (*) in the U.S., certified in programs that address whole-building energy (NC, EB:OM, CS, School).  This is nearly 100X the aforementioned number of LEED-certified buildings whose annual energy consumption have been studied in the peer-reviewed literature.  Obtaining energy performance data is a critical road block to understanding building energy performance.

To address this, the USGBC, starting in 2009 with its version 3 certification programs, instituted a requirement that all LEED-certified buildings must report to the USGBC for five consecutive years following certification, whole building energy use data.  It was hoped that such data would demonstrate the success of the program in saving energy and would guide future improvements in the LEED standard.

So, what have we learned from these data gathered by the USGBC?  We have learned that the USGBC does not want to publicize these data.  Four buildings were certified in version 3 programs in 2010 — so their first year energy performance data would have been reported in 2011.  That number has grown dramatically in successive years.  The graph below shows the total number of buildings certified in relevant LEED.v3 or LEED.v4 programs as of January 1 of the year shown.  By January 2017 this number had grown to nearly 10,000.  When 2018 arrives these buildings will have another year of energy use data to report to the USGBC.  Moreover, 1,931 of these buildings certified by the first of 2013 should be reporting their fifth year of energy consumption.  Where are the reports that analyze these data?

So why isn’t the USGBC making these data available for analysis?  The answer is simple — the data show that LEED-certification is not saving the 30-35% energy that the USGBC has claimed for years.  This is no different from General Motors suppressing data that show Corvairs are not safe, tobacco companies hiding data that show cigarettes cause cancer, or the Catholic church protecting priests accused of sexual misconduct.  All organizations, first and foremost, care about self-preservation.

But the LEED project data show another interesting trend.  Again, looking at the commercial LEED systems that address whole-building energy, it is interesting to look at the numbers of U.S. buildings that were certified by year.  This graph is shown below.  The graph shows a trend that you can detect when you talk to builders and building managers.  Interest in LEED is waning.  2013 was the peak year for LEED certifications in the US.  Since that peak the annual number of U.S. commercial buildings receiving LEED certification in these programs has steadily declined.  Builders and property owners are catching on to the fact that LEED buildings are not saving energy, and the novelty of certification is wearing off.

The graph above actually over-estimates the number buildings certified each year.  The reason is that some buildings get certified a second, and even a third time.  These certifications are counted above, even though these “re-certifications” do not add new buildings to the list (just new certifications).

The USGBC, of course, does more than just certify U.S. buildings in the whole-building energy systems considered here.  Marketing green is their strength — they have exported their wares to many other countries and they have invented new LEED certification systems that can make small tenants in large buildings feel good (e.g., commercial interiors, CI).  No doubt global USGBC sales continue to rise.

But make no mistake about it — the core product of energy efficiency is falling flat with U.S. commercial building owners because the product is highly flawed.

* The numbers provided from the LEED project database refer to registered projects.  It is not quite right to say each project corresponds to a building.  A

Federal Government Brags about Being Average

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I recently ran across a post on the Energy Information Agency (EIA’s) web sit highlighting the fact that from 2003 to 2012 Federal buildings had achieved a greater decrease in energy use intensity than had been achieved by commercial buildings, on average. I find this spin to be offensive on various levels.

The relevant graph is shown below.

2016-09-16-government-building-eui

The first thing to note is that, even with this decrease in energy use Federal buildings still have higher EUI than do other commercial buildings (compare the red and blue 2012 bars).

Second, while I am pleased that the Federal government is learning how to operate its buildings almost as well as the rest of the commercial building sector, it is not a remarkable accomplishment.  It reminds me of a verbal exchange between then Governor Bill Clinton and businessman Ross Perot during a presidential debate.  Clinton was bragging that under his leadership the State of Arkansas had improved its rank among other states in education from almost last up to the middle of the pack.  Ross Perot pointed out that you don’t have to be innovative when you are ranked last — you will move up by just copying what others have done.  (I will confess, this is my memory of what happened, but it might be that I imagined this exchange — it is a good story, in any case.)

Third, why is the EIA engaging in such spin?  This agency is supposed to gather and disseminate energy facts.  Spin should be left to political parties.

 

What does it mean to say “the Hotel at Oberlin is solar powered?”

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The Hotel at Oberlin, also called the Peter Lewis Gateway Hotel, opened two weeks ago just in time for Oberlin College graduation.  This hotel replaces the Oberlin Inn and has been put forward as the corner stone of what will become a sustainable block of buildings — called the green arts district.  As the budget for this building continues to swell it is unlikely the College will make further headway on the “green arts district” for some time to come.

In multiple venues (Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Cleveland City Club, Cleveland Plain Dealer, etc.) the Special Assistant to the Oberlin College President on Sustainability and the Environment, has described the Hotel at Oberlin as “100% solar powered.”  Here I address the credibility of this claim.  I find the claim to be lacking in substance, yet very costly to the College.

The Hotel at Oberlin will use both electricity and natural gas.  100% of its electricity will be purchased from the local utility, Oberlin Municipal Light & Power Systems (OMLPS), as is the case for nearly all Oberlin College buildings.  In addition, the hotel will use natural gas to produce all of its hot water and, if necessary, for additional winter heating should its ground source heat pumps be unable to meet the demand.  This is a likely situation since the hotel, which is eight times the size of the Lewis Environmental Center, has a ground-well field that is less than four times the size of that building’s well field.  The building includes no on-site renewable power generation, whatsoever.  Based on equipment size the utility estimates a 1,000,000 kWh increase in annual electric use.  That means the new, “energy efficient” hotel will use nearly 2,000,000 kWh of electric energy — more than double that used by the Oberlin Inn it replaces.

What then, could be the basis of the solar power claim?  The President’s Office would have people believe the solar energy for the hotel is coming from the 2.2 MW photovoltaic (PV) array constructed four years ago north of the athletic fields, the so-called OSSO array.  Apparently the College is trying to convince the US Green Building Council (USGBC) that this array provides “on-site renewable energy” to the hotel – worth as many as 8 points towards its coveted LEED certification.

But what is on-site solar electricity?  On-site solar, such as that provided by the two photovoltaic (PV) arrays at the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, furnish electric power directly to a building, avoiding the transmission losses that occur when power passes through multiple high-voltage transformers and transmission lines.  On-site solar generation, added to an existing building,  lowers the building’s fossil energy and carbon footprint.  And, by avoiding transmission losses, the benefits of on-site solar are greater than those achievable through off-site renewable sources.  It should be noted that the converse – adding a building to an existing solar array – increases total greenhouse gas emission!

It is not possible for the OSSO PV array to provide on-site electricity to the Hotel at Oberlin.  First, it is located a mile away from the Hotel — not exactly “on-site.”  Second, the College entered into the OSSO project long before the hotel was conceived. When the OSSO array was constructed in 2012 the College chose to connect it directly to the OMLPS electric grid.  Transmission losses are not avoided.  Third, the City takes all of the array’s electric energy and, in turn, pays the College a premium rate (above the City’s average wholesale generation cost) of $0.085 per kWh.  This arrangement has zero impact on electric sales to College buildings – each building continues to purchase retail electric energy from OMLPS as if the array did not exist.  The City sends the College a monthly check in exchange for this energy which, to date, total more than $800,000.  OMLPS includes the OSSO PV array in its power portfolio.  Once electrons enter the OMLPS grid they go everywhere; they are not “special electrons” that only go to the Hotel or other College buildings.

And finally, even if the College now chose to construct a dedicated, mile-long cable to connect the OSSO array to the Hotel it would be of no use because the College signed a 25-year contract to deliver 100% of the array’s energy to the City in exchange for $85/MWh.  Off-site renewable energy is a good thing, too.  A building can obtain off-site energy by purchasing Renewable Energy Credits or RECs.  The USGBC provides up to 3 points towards LEED certification if a building uses RECs to offset a large fraction of its electric use.  In principle, the RECs produced by the OSSO array make the Hotel at Oberlin eligible for these points.  In fact, OMLPS already holds RECs (mostly wind and hydro) to cover about 85% of its electricity.  That means that any building purchasing energy from the OMLPS grid can claim RECs for 85% of its electric energy.

The College receives all of the RECs associated with OSSO’s energy and does not sell these to the City.  The day OSSO went on-line these RECs made Oberlin College a greener place – and that is a good thing!  The credit is entirely due to the OSSO array.  In principal these RECs may be “assigned” to any College building.  They could, for instance, be assigned to Finney Chapel, built more than 100 years ago.  Does this assignment now make Finney Chapel “100% solar powered?”  Perhaps – but Finney Chapel remains the same energy hog it has always been.  And no one would be fooled by this association into believing that Finney Chapel is now worthy of architectural design awards.  Assigning these RECs to Finney Chapel does not make Oberlin College any greener than it was in 2012 the day the OSSO array began producing its green energy.

And so calling the Gateway Hotel “solar powered” tells us nothing about the hotel or its design; it is nothing more than a cheap marketing trick.

But, as it turns out, it isn’t cheap at all – it is an expensive marketing trick.

The financial model that justified the OSSO array called for the College to sell these solar RECs into Ohio’s REC market and replace them with cheaper wind RECs — adopting a strategy similar to that used by the City of Oberlin to generate its now famous REC revenue.  Put simply, the College would sell its solar RECs into the Ohio REC market at a high price (perhaps $50/MWh) and replace them with cheaper wind RECs (perhaps $5/MWh).  This strategy provided the College with more than $200,000 additional revenue during OSSO’s first two years of operation.

But after the first two years the College stopped selling its solar RECs  – foregoing tens of thousands of dollars in revenue.  During this time Ohio REC prices dropped significantly.  Yet even today solar RECs generated by OSSO have an estimated annual value of $45,000.

Perhaps this lost revenue represents incompetence of the Oberlin College Finance Office.  In addition, this office has remained silent while the City debates whether to return REC revenues to electric customers – of which the College portion would be $200,000 per year!  These are strange financial decisions at a time when the College is desperately seeking to close a huge budget deficit and threatening to downsize its work force.

I believe Oberlin College’s decision not to sell RECs is more calculated.  I believe the decision not to sell OSSO’s solar RECs was made to bolster the narrative that this array provides on-site solar energy to the Hotel at Oberlin.  In 2014 when designers of the Hotel at Oberlin came up with this scheme — it was too late.  The College had already connected the array directly to the City grid, entered a 25-year contract with the City, and it had already sold off two years of its solar RECs.  But why let facts get in the way?  I believe that the President’s Office decided to stop selling the RECs and pushed the USGBC to accept the idea that the OSSO array provides on-site solar energy to the Hotel at Oberlin — facts be damned!

What is the cost of this decision?  It appears the College failed to honor the third year of its contract to sell solar RECs at $50/MWh.  No doubt the purchasing party in that contract did not object — since the market value for these RECs have fallen to $15/MWh.  The array is expected to produce 3,000 MWh per year.  The lost revenue from REC sales for 2015 is probably $100,000, and at current REC prices, continued failure to sell these RECs represents an additional $30,000 per year in lost net-revenue.  (Note that out-of-state wind RECs purchased to replace solar RECs cost $5/MWh.)

LEED certification is known to add to the cost of design and construction.  But in this case the College is looking to pay an annual fee of $20,000 (in lost REC revenue) to buy 5 LEED points towards its Hotel certification!  (The Hotel’s estimated electric use is 2/3 the amount produced by the OSSO array).  Is LEED certification really worth such an ongoing expense — a kind of franchise fee?

The more disturbing question in all this has to do with the fiscal responsibility of these kinds of decisions.  It is pretty clear that the President of Oberlin College pays more attention to his Special Assistant on Sustainability and the Environment than he does to his own V.P. of Finance.  How long will the Oberlin College Board of Trustees allow this insanity to go on?

San Francisco PUC Building not so green

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SFPUC photoThe San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Administration building, constructed in 2012, has been billed as the greenest office building in North America.  Yesterday the San Francisco Examiner published an article which suggests the declaration was a bit premature.   According to its author, Joshua Sabatini, the $202 million dollar, LEED Platinum building has not performed up to expectations.  The building included integrated photovoltaic panels and wind turbines — enough to provide 7% of the building’s energy (not sure if that is total energy or just electric energy).  The energy produced by the wind turbines was never metered and the wind turbines have already been decommissioned; the company that installed them has filed for bankruptcy.  While the PV panels are reported to have satisfactory performance the inverter room was over-heating, requiring the installation of an auxiliary cooling system.  We will have to take the SFPUC’s word for this result as nowhere can I locate specific information about the expected PV electric generation.  It is so much easier to control the story when you don’t share the facts.

But Sabatini’s article does not discuss the energy performance of this building which is also rather disappointing.  According to 2014 energy benchmarking data published by San Francisco for municipal buildings the 277,511 sf SFPUC building had a measured site EUI of 54 kBtu/sf, just 10% lower than the mean for SF office buildings (60 kBtu/sf).  This is hardly the 32% energy savings claimed on the sfwater.org web site.  Moreover, the source EUI for this building is 153 kBtu/sf, which is 10% higher than the mean for the other 38 municipal office buildings whose 2014 energy data were disclosed.  This “greenest office building in North America” uses 10% more primary energy than used for other municipal office buildings — most of them constructed many years ago.

In other words this LEED Platinum building, the greenest office building in North America, uses 10% more primary energy than its counterparts in the San Francisco municipal building stock.  Sounds like a real winner.

Previously in 2009 I found that LEED-certified office buildings demonstrated modest (about 10%) site energy savings but, owing to their greater reliance on electric energy, demonstrated no significant source energy savings.  The result for the SFPUC building is even worse.

2012 CBECS show building energy use up from 2003

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Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released summary energy use data from its 2012 Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS).  The EIA reports that, as compared with 2003 results, the energy use intensity (EUI) for all U.S. commercial buildings has decreased by 12%.  They also report that for office buildings and educational buildings EUI have decreased by 16% and 17%, respectively.  These numbers, taken at face value, would appear to be encouraging.

But dig a little deeper and you find there is not much to celebrate.  The first thing to note is that mother nature does not care about energy use intensity.  This is a man-made metric for comparing energy use between buildings of different size. What really matters is total green house gas emission and total fossil fuel consumption.  To arrest global climate change, or at least to stabilize it, will require a global reduction in annual green house gas emission.

The 2012 CBECS data show that the total gross square footage (gsf) of the U.S. commercial building stock has expanded by 21% since 2003.  Its total (site) energy consumption has expanded by 7%.  That’s right — U.S. buildings are using more (not less) energy.  During this same time the U.S. population grew by 7.6%.  If world energy consumption and green house gas emission continues to grow with world population we are doomed!  Energy use in undeveloped countries will grow much faster than population as they increase their standard of living.  This growth is especially notable in India and China.  Developed countries like the US — which already use 5X-10X more energy per capita than non-developed countries — must decrease their energy consumption and green house gas emission.  Yet the U.S. is not even holding steady.

The above figures are based on site energy — not primary or source energy which is what really matters.  Building source energy — which includes the off-site energy use associated with energy generation and transportation — is a better indicator of primary energy consumed by buildings.

I have made crude source energy calculations based on the 2012 CBECS summary data and find that for all U.S. commercial buildings source EUI decreases by only 7% and source EUI for offices and educational buildings decreased by 12 and 13% respectively.

But again, what matters is total primary, or equivalently, source energy consumption.  When you combine these figures with the 21% growth in building gsf you find that the total source energy for all buildings increased by 13% — faster than the rate of population growth!  For offices and educational buildings the increases in source energy were 15 and 8%, respectively.  For offices that is double the rate of U.S. population growth and for educational buildings it is about the same as population growth.

2003 to 2012 is the decade of ENERGY STAR and LEED building certification.  These programs both provide cover for building owners to “feel good” about their ever-growing buildings that consume more energy and produce more green-house gas emission — yet are judged to be “green” and “energy-efficient.”  Proponents of these programs will claim that, while their accomplishments are disappointing, things would be far worse if these programs and their goals did not exist.  I doubt the truth of this assertion.  There is no evidence that ENERGY STAR and LEED-certified buildings are performing any better, on average, than other commercial buildings.  These programs are pretty much a distraction from the important societal goals to reduce green house gas emission.

The 2012 CBECS data also put the EPA’s claims that ENERGY STAR benchmarking is saving energy into perspective.  In 2012 the EPA published marketing literature which claimed that 35,000 buildings that used Portfolio Manager to benchmark for the consecutive years 2008, 2009,, 2010, and 2011 demonstrated a 7% reduction in source EUI over this same time period.  The analysis is sophomoric because they literally average the EUI for these 35,000 buildings rather than calculate their total gross source EUI (as does CBECS) which is the sum of all their source energy divided by the sum of their gsf.  It is entirely possible that the gross EUI for these buildings did not decrease at all while their average showed 7% reduction. The 35,000 buildings in the EPA study is dominated by office buildings — by far the largest set of buildings that use their benchmarking software.  Hence their claim of 7% reduction in source energy over the three year period must be seen in a context in which all U.S. office buildings saw a reduction in source EUI of 12% over a 9 year period.  There is simply little reason to believe that buildings that benchmark perform any better than those that don’t.

Once again real energy performance data cast doubt on energy savings claims for U.S. buildings.