Haworth says 'no' to RECs, 'yes' to offsets

One Haworth Center is certified LEED Gold.

In late April, Holland-based Haworth Inc., a designer and manufacturer of environmentally preferred office furniture, announced a first for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-New Construction (LEED-NC) rating system.

Haworth, which achieved Gold certification for its new headquarters building in Holland, used carbon credits from a renewable energy project to achieve "green" power credits rather than purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs), as is traditional under the LEED rating system. The company decided to go with carbon credits instead of RECs because they offered assurance that its purchase would add renewable energy to the grid, according to Haworth's senior environmental enginee, Steve Kooy. The 4,100 metric tons of carbon credits, which were purchased from The CarbonNeutral Company and certified by Voluntary Carbon Standard, come from a run-of-river hydro project in China. The company chose to work with a Chinese project because it could not find a project in the United States that met its additionality requirements, says Kooy.

Most green building advocates and designers tend to favor onsite renewable energy generation as the primary method of assuring "green" power supplies a site. When onsite generation is not a viable source, as was the case with Haworth’s headquarters building, LEED project applicants usually purchase RECs. Now that it has blazed the trail with U.S. Green Building Council, the company says using offsets will be a growing trend for future LEED-NC projects.

Others are not so sure that carbon offsets are the best choice to meet LEED's "green" power credit. "Many carbon credits simply deal with emissions that have already occurred," says Pat Nye, vice president of the Climate Business Group at Bonneville Environmental Foundation. "Rather than focusing on these symptoms, renewable electricity changes the source to one that doesn't pollute in the first place. And in the U.S., the leading way to accomplishing this shift is through RECs and utility "green" power."

Nye also says he is doubtful that carbon offsets will replace RECs as the preferred way to offset power use. "I think that depends on what the cheapest way to reach this LEED point will be," he says. "I seriously doubt there's preference for carbon offsets over RECs driven by customers."

In 2009, Haworth reported global sales revenues of $1.11 billion. BEF sells independently certified carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates to the consumer and business markets.