Data centres must now be included in Canadian Portfolio Manager

In February 2018 important updates were made to Canadian Portfolio Manager. These included updates to the scoring models based on the data from the 2014 Survey of Commercial and Institutional Energy Use (SCIEU) and updates to source energy factors to reflect the latest data. The other important change was the addition of an adjustment factor for data centres located in office buildings, allowing data centre energy to be included in the total building energy consumption.

This significant change is the result of collaboration between the CaGBC, NRCan, the EPA and the USGBC to have the Canadian Portfolio Manager incorporate a model for data centres in Canadian office buildings ensuring the high energy use of data centres is accounted for in the ENERGY STAR score. This will ensure that commercial office buildings with data centres receive an equitable score.

With this update, data centre energy use in office buildings is no longer required to be sub-metered as the tool uses estimates to adjust the performance score of the Office Property Type. With this automatic adjustment factor, the allowance previously given to LEED Canada EB:O&M 2009 projects to exclude the data centre energy consumption and associated floor area (provided the space was submetered and the floor area was 10% or less of the building floor area), is no longer permitted. Data centre energy must be included in the total building energy consumption entered in Portfolio Manager.

This update impacts LEED projects across all rating system versions, including LEED Canada EB:O&M 2009 and LEED O+M v4 projects.

Please see the CaGBC website for additional details regarding the February 2018 updates to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager and how these updates affect LEED projects