Designers can now earn credit under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for use of the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Office Buildings.
The inclusion of the design guide will help designers achieve LEED certification, offered by the U.S. Green Building Council.
"The small office design guide clearly meets the overall goal of LEED in that it accelerates the development and implementation of green building practices," Lee Burgett, P.E., ASHRAE president, said. "The design guide series is intended to provide prescriptive guidance to bring us 30 percent closer to a net zero-energy building, meaning those that use equal or less energy than they produce on an annual basis. Our goal is to provide the technical resources needed to assist the HVAC&R industry in creating the most sustainable buildings possible."
Specifically, the design guide has been added in LEED-NC 2.1 and the upcoming LEED-NC 2.2 as a prescriptive compliance path to achieve LEED-NC Energy and Atmosphere Credit 1, Optimize Energy Performance (EAc1), credit.
LEED-NC EAc1 is intended to reduce environmental impacts associated with excessive energy use by awarding LEED credit to buildings that achieve increasing levels of energy performance above ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999.
The guide establishes a previously unavailable prescriptive compliance path and enables small office design teams to earn LEED-NC EAc1 points without incurring the costs associated with whole building energy simulation. Small office buildings that successfully demonstrate compliance with the guide will be awarded 4 LEED EAc1 points.
The guide was developed by a committee representing a diverse group of energy professionals drawn from ASHRAE, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the New Buildings Institute (NBI), the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) and the Department of Energy (DOE).
