http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/citizen/through-prediction-performance-how-d... Lawsuit Claims Major "Green" Building Certification Makes False Claims on Energy Savings By JIM GUNSHINAN|December 17, 2010 12:31 p.m. Henry Gifford, a mechanical systems designer and principal at Gifford Fuel Savings, Inc. in New York City, is suing the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for millions of dollars. Gifford, in the class action suit, claims that the USGBC has committed fraud in the selling of its Leadership in Energy Efficient Design (LEED) program, and has unfairly kept work away from people like him who are not involved in the program. (Photo of Henry by Travis Roozee.) There is a LEED for New Construction (NC), LEED for Homes, and LEED for Existing Buildings (EB), among other certifications. The rub for Gifford is that LEED is a very popular and widespread program—some municipalities require LEED certification for new city buildings—that makes claims about energy efficiency that it can’t back up. The claims of energy saving attract builders and developers to seek LEED certification, and people in architecture firms, building energy consultants, and others in the building industry have rushed to become LEED approved providers; that means they are able to help builders meet the building requirements and fill out the paperwork needed to apply for certification. Buildings with LEED certification draw higher rents and people with “LEED AP” after their names make money shepherding builders through the certification process. The issue hinges on a study commissioned by the USGBC in 2008. The New Buildings Institute (NBI) study compared buildings that are LEED certified with similar buildings that are not certified. NBI claims that LEED buildings use about 25-30% less energy than conventional buildings. But according to Gifford, who examined the data from the study, LEED buildings actually use about 29% more energy than conventional buildings. Gifford has legitimate concerns about how NBI gathered, sorted, and analyzed the study data. For example, the data on LEED buildings was submitted by a small percentage of LEED building owners; those who take the trouble to keep records and who want to share information on how their building performs. In another example, the mean energy use of one set of buildings is compared to the median energy use of another set, possibly skewing the results in favor of the LEED buildings. The USGBC counters that they do not guarantee energy savings. They model energy use using a software program and only certify that a buildings meets its design specification—sustainable wood, recycled steel, interior building material that doesn’t off-gas noxious chemicals, and so on—with predicted energy efficiency only a part of the requirements for certification. Gifford has been a thorn in the side of the USGBC for years. His criticism, along with that of others, has pushed the USGBC in the right direction. The LEED EB program requires that buildings actually perform; that they save as much energy as is predicted through the modeling software. USGBC is encouraging LEED NC building owners to take part in the LEED EH program; they are also asking LEED NC building owners to submit energy-use data that can be used to a study the effectiveness of the program. But this is not required for LEED NC certification. Gifford is afraid that in the future someone will do a thorough study of green building performance energy will be so important that we will start to measure it,” writes Gifford in a recent Press Release. “And I predict that when that happens, building energy efficiency will start to be measured by building energy use. At that time, the currently popular systems based on computer predictions of energy use will be shown to be useless, and abandoned.” Barbara George wrote on 12/30/2010 Fascinating story - FYI the last paragraph was partly deleted - here it is from another source: 'Gifford is afraid that in the future someone will do a thorough study of green building performance and use the information to discredit the whole green building movement. “I predict that someday, energy will be so important that we will start to measure it,” writes Gifford in a recent Press Release. “And I predict that when that happens, building energy efficiency will start to be measured by building energy use. At that time, the currently popular systems based on computer predictions of energy use will be shown to be useless, and abandoned.”' Energy efficiency is certainly important enough to measure and California has developed elaborate ways to measure it (at a cost of $100 million for a 3-year EE cycle - which is paid by ratepayers of the big four investor-owned utilities— PG&E, Edison, SoCal Gas and SDG&E). Unfortunately the measurement system was designed mainly to tell the CA Public Utilities Commission how much "rewards" utilities should get for saving energy. (On Dec. 16, 2010 CPUC voted 3-2 to override the first ever fully independent evaluations, overseen by its own staff — which said all the utilities did such a poor job on 2006-08 EE programs that they deserved no profits and PG&E's programs failed so badly that it should get a penalty. (Oblivious to the public's interest, the majority approved CPUC Pres. Peevey's alternate decision that gave utilities another $68 million on top of $143 million already awarded in 2008 and 2009, based on utilities' original savings estimates. Pres. Peevey asserted that utilities couldn't possibly have known their projected savings were grossly exaggerated. (The Commissioner in charge of energy efficiency, Dian Grueneich, finally broke ranks and described multiple advance warnings that evaluators were likely to downgrade utilities' inflated assumptions. Of course the Commission could have done more than issue warnings — it should have ordered utilities to revise their numbers. PG&E maintained its lies, stepped up its lobbying instead of its energy savings — and won more than $100 million “rewards” for its sociopathic choices.) What the Commission should really be asking is Gifford's question: tracking the extent to which actual energy use falls (or rises) due to EE projects - and taking that up to the system level: do the EE upgrades actually reduce the load on the grid, and exactly where and when do the savings occur. This is what’s needed for energy efficiency to become a grid-viable resource (which would allow states to close polluting power plants and lower the cost of converting to renewable energy — solar, wind, geothermal, small hydro and biofuels). The New England Independent System Operator (manager of that region’s electricity grid) has measurement guidelines for EE and other “demand-side” projects that cover what really matters on the grid, and EE has been able to bid into their energy auctions as a result. The CPUC recognized that utilities have a conflict of interest with saving energy but rejected the obvious solution of looking outside the utilities — to cities, counties, small businesses and nonprofits — for people to manage and implement these programs who really want them to succeed. Instead, California adopted these so-called "risk/rewards" for utilities — where all the risk is on ratepayers, none on utilities. Utilities nonchalantly game the system by getting profits on non-existent savings as well as on the power plants and transmission lines that should have been but were not deferred or displaced by EE projects. California utilities have the cocky attitude that they can get away with these scams, and up to now they have succeeded, thanks perhaps to their campaign contributions to nearly every politician in Sacramento and many local races, plus "charitable donations" to so-called environmental organizations that support these green charades and others who keep silent. PG&E tosses crumbs to efficiency insiders including its “platinum” sponsorship of the Northern California chapter of the US Green Building Council. On the USGBC-NCC website you’ll find accolades for the LEED-NC Berkeley YMCA-PG&E Teen Center —“donated” by PG&E! That sounds so generous, unless you know that for several years Berkeley has failed to move forward on its opportunity to become the default provider of energy AND/OR energy efficiency for its own residents and businesses — i.e. replacing PG&E’s choices. Feasibility studies funded by the State’s Energy Commission showed that Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond and others could serve their residents and businesses more than twice the renewable energy as PG&E provides, without raising rates, if they were to become “Community Choice” energy providers. “Marin Clean Energy” proved this to be true, in its very first year of operations. Seven of eleven Marin councils showed great courage, and with the support of a well-informed community managed to withstand a three-year barrage of BS and dirty tricks from PG&E (including the $46 million the company spent on the losing statewide Prop 16 on the June 2010 ballot, whereby PG&E sought to shut down its competition). The final step for Marin Clean Energy — still to come — is to make sure CPUC implements the provisions of the Community Choice law that would enable Marin — or any other cities and counties in California — to become the local administrator of energy efficiency dollars. Currently, under the utility monopoly on energy efficiency in California, cities and counties have no choice except “EE partnerships” with the utilities — where the utilities hold the purse-strings and pick apart the program plans. CPUC gives credit to the utilities for all the work that cities do — providing utilities with more EE profits as well as chips for carbon trading — and robbing cities of that money. Research I have done for Women’s Energy Matters, as a public interest advocate in CPUC energy efficiency proceedings since 2001, shows that independent (non-utility) energy efficiency programs save far more energy per dollar than California’s investor-owned utilities – and produce far more local jobs and economic benefits. This is not widely known because relentless self-promotion by California utilities and their sycophants has fed a national legend about California’s supremacy in energy efficiency — which was true under Gov. Jerry Brown’s first administration but was long since lost. Hopefully things will improve now that Brown is returning to Sacramento — but we should take nothing for granted. He’ll need to hear from a lot of people that what’s going on now is unacceptable. The good news is that energy efficiency is becoming a bigger part of the energy business all across the country, and we need it to become much bigger still to make a dent in climate change. The best of all EE programs are ones that reward the diligence and creativity of EE contractors like Gifford appears to be. While I have not yet had an opportunity to review his case, I greatly admire his willingness to call attention to a hole in the heart of the system that certainly seems like it needs to be addressed. We need more transparency and objective standards to stem the phony green-washing and outright corruption that threatens to undermine this essential service. Barbara George Fairfax, CA www.womensenergymatters.org