Green Building Community
The World’s First LEED Zero Building
Posted by: Suelen Ribeiro // Architect/ LEED GA
The USGBC has now certified the first LEED Zero building for net-zero energy to the engineering and green building Consulting firm Petinelli for its Curitiba headquarter in Brazil.
The LEED Zero program announced in September 2018 is a new program created to be an additional reward for LEED-certified buildings. The program promotes zero impact in one of the four categories: carbon emissions, energy use, water use or net zero waste.
“We’ve been bugging USGBC about net-zero energy for a while now,” commented Guido Petinelli, managing director at the firm. “It was a pleasant surprise to hear about the launch of LEED Zero just before Greenbuild Chicago.”
The office building with 440 square meters has been net-positive energy for more than a year and recently in September 2018 achieved Platinum under LEED v4 for Existing Building: Operation Maintenance (O+M).
A rooftop photovoltaic array produces 15 kilowatts providing around 125% of the energy needed to run the 25-person office space.
“We didn’t understand this at the time, but LEED Platinum was a stepping stone toward LEED Zero,” said Petinelli. “It helps that Brazil is a sunny place.”
The Petinelli office building had also certified under the Green Building Council Brasil zero energy program. The difference between the GBC Brasil zero energy program and the LEED Zero program is that GBC uses site energy as a metric, while LEED Zero uses source energy, therefore the only challenge was determining the source-to-site-energy ratio for Brazil.
To read more: https://www.usgbc.org/articles/leed-zero-petinelli-headquarters-creates-momentum-client-goals
https://www.buildinggreen.com/newsbrief/world-s-first-leed-zero-building
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