Demand response to become LEED credit

May 17, 2011

Skipping Stone, Schneider Electric, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have formed a committee tasked with enhancing the current Demand Response LEED® Pilot Credit. The team is collaborating on the market pilots and research/feedback phase of the phased rollout of the credit program. The credit is intended to enable commercial building owners and LEED green building projects to earn credits in LEED for enrolling in utility or wholesale market demand response programs.

The team is working on defining demand response, establishing options for buildings, and implementing and documenting requirement guidelines. The team also is developing a robust market research agenda to study participation across markets, adoption criteria, load reduction scenarios, utility service territory benchmarking, and implementation technology drivers. To assist buildings in identifying existing demand response programs, Skipping Stone will provide U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) members with a searchable national database of programs.

"Demand response is unique in comparison to other LEED credits as it requires coordination with the utility and wholesale markets," said Brendan Owens, vice president, LEED Technical Development, USGBC. "By bringing this team of experts from the energy and building communities together, USGBC will benefit from the combined expertise."

"Demand response is a new path for USGBC and critical to the building communities' involvement in the smart grid," said Mark MacCracken, USGBC chairman.

Jim Anderson, vice president, USA Utility and Smart Grid Business for Schneider Electric, added, "One of our key strategic initiatives focuses on taking buildings into the energy markets through demand response initiatives. Being asked to assist USGBC by providing our proven building and implementation perspective is an honor in this groundbreaking endeavor."

The revised Demand Response LEED Pilot Credit will be made public when Phase III is completed. Based on feedback from participating buildings, the market research generated in the market pilots, and input from pilot sponsors, recommendations will be made for eventual integration of the demand response credit into the Energy and Atmosphere Credits in the next version of the LEED rating system, LEED 2012.

To propel building community adoption of both demand response and the revised LEED credit, USGBC will be launching a series of utility service territory market pilots. Skipping Stone, the market pilot manager, currently is developing stakeholder support with potential host utilities, market operators, regulators, enabling technology, and services providers and other interested parties.

"This USGBC initiative is a game-changer for the adoption of demand response by the commercial building sector," said Peter Weigand, Skipping Stone chairman and CEO. "We hope that the energy community gets behind these market pilots because this is a great opportunity to help drive commercial-sector adoption of load management programs."

Skipping Stone is an energy consulting firm, www.skippingstone.com. The U.S. Green Building Council is a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainable building design and construction, www.usgbc.org. Schneider Electric is a global energy management company, www.schneider-electric.com. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory managed by the University of California for the DOE Office of Science, www.lbl.gov.