1. Scope

Keywords

Rationale

New rationale: a standard of practice is needed for measuring greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the use of buildings primarily through electricity, energy, fuel, and GHG emissions during operation of buildings. Several existing energy efficiency and GHG frameworks exist and there are 2 new measuring practices are in development from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). This standard development for operational carbon (not embodied carbon) will review these existing frameworks and standards to augment, reference, and/or expand, to start facilitating building decarbonization with a normative standard of practice. For residential buildings, the direction may go beyond the building itself to include measuring the household GHG footprint from electricity, fuel, efficiency of envelope and equipment, transportation, food, and clothing sources. A standard guide may be developed to provide a library of resources to facilitate this standard of practice. Original rationale: ISO standards for so-called "offset certificates" require extensive in-person audits and, usually, extensive use of sensors, making them very difficult to account for the full scope of GHG emissions nationwide. We've done extensive stakeholder engagement across industrial sectors of agriculture, buildings, consumer products, energy, transportation, including with federal labs and researchers at Department of Energy, US Department of Agricultural, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and others, establishing the need and interest in a scalable standard to drive emissions reductions and in keeping with the Federal Government's target of carbon net-zero by 2050.