Brazil. As the USGBC and the global community continue to raise sustainability standards, net zero is becoming the new goal for many leaders in green building. LEED Zero certification was announced at Greenbuild Chicago in 2018 as a complement to LEED certification that would recognize net achievements in carbon, energy, water and waste.
The first building to certify the use of LEED Zero was the Curitiba headquarters of the Brazilian green engineering and construction consultancy Petinelli, a member company of the USGBC since 2008. The 440-square-meter office building in Curitiba is located in a converted warehouse and was certified under LEED v4 for Operations and Maintenance in September 2018. Before the end of December, it also received LEED Zero certification.
All energy is produced on site, with an energy use intensity for the site of only 25 kilowatt hours per square meter per year. A 15-kilowatt photovoltaic array provides about 125% of the energy needed to run the 25-person office.
Petinelli's three office locations in Brazil are LEED Platinum, and the firm is committed to achieving LEED Platinum in all future client projects.
For CEO Guido Petinelli, a LEED AP who was also named a LEED member in 2018, net-zero energy and water had been a goal for some time. He calls the Curitiba office a "living laboratory and showroom" of the performance goals the firm encourages its clients.
"One of our customers challenged us to achieve LEED Platinum in all our projects," explains Petinelli. "We knew instinctively that if we were going to 'chat' with our customers, we'd better 'walk' by ourselves. Such a bold goal attracted the kind of customers who were ready."
Green Building Council Brazil has its own zero energy program, under which the Petinelli office building was also certified. GBC Brazil uses site power as a metric, while LEED Zero uses the power source, so the only challenge was determining the source-to-site ratio of energy for Brazil.
However, as an engineering firm, Petinelli had that information available. In addition, the project had been positive in energy for over a year and was able to easily gather the data needed to obtain LEED Zero Energy certification.
"Performance is easy to measure and even easier to certify," says Petinelli.
Petinelli's next goal is to become certified for net-zero water, as the office has been off-grid in water use for nearly two years. Brazil offers plenty of sunshine for Petinelli's solar installation, but it also rains 200 days a year in Curitiba, and the company used lessons learned from designing a Coca-Cola plant to create a system for collecting and treating rainwater for drinking water. own headquarters.
In Petinelli's experience, customers get excited about concepts like net zero because it's a simpler way to think about performance that also provides a bold and ambitious goal.
"LEED is most effective when it's aspirational," Petinelli says. "Human nature is wanting to do better, and recognition is a powerful motivator. I find it easier to convince customers to opt for Platinum, and now LEED Zero, than to just certify."
Source: USGBC.
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