ILFI launches new Zero Carbon Certification

The International Living Future Institute has unveiled a new Zero Carbon Certification.

The Zero Carbon Certification provides greater flexibility around project fuel types (for existing projects) and placement and ownership of offsetting renewables than ILFI’s Reveal and the Zero Energy Certifications, the Institute said in a news release. The new certification is the first worldwide Zero Carbon third-party certified standard, ILFI says.

The new certification is a “broad-based tool for highlighting highly efficient buildings which offset their energy use, regardless of location of renewables,” ILFI says. “It builds on and implements the Zero Carbon concept released by Architecture 2030, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the New Buildings Institute in 2016, and the worldwide call for zero carbon standards from the World Green Building Council issued in 2017.”

The certification requirements include: buildings must achieve a targeted energy efficiency level during a one-year performance period, and all of the project’s energy use must be offset by on- or off-site renewable energy on a net annual basis. The Zero Carbon certification is the first step towards Living Building Challenge certification.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.