Energy consumption evaluation of United States Navy LEED certified buildings for fiscal year 2009

Abstract

As of October 1, 2008, the Department of the Navy inserted the requirement that all new buildings constructed for the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps would have an additional requirement to become Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certified by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). The goal of this effort is in compliance with Executive Order (EO) 13423, which provides that all Government departments must reduce energy consumption by 30% by 2015. The objective of this research is to find if the eleven buildings for the United States Navy that have already received a LEED certification or higher, have achieved the expected energy consumption savings in comparison to other similar non-LEED certified facilities. To accomplish this effort, these buildings have been compared to other United States Navy and Marine Corps commercial buildings of comparable size, usage, and within the same region as chosen by the respective Public Works Departments. The data being compared for this study will be electricity and water consumption, based upon what could be received from the current building's meters. Additionally, these LEED certified buildings will be compared to the national averages for electricity consumption as expressed by the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) to find if any energy savings is achieved to buildings of similar size.