42 U.S.C. § 17061 — Definitions
submitted 19 years ago by Pub. L. 110-140 to r/title-42-THE-PUBLIC-HEALTH-AND-WELFARE · 1,478 words · no verdicts yet
This section defines the key terms used throughout the federal law on high-performance green buildings. It explains words like "GSA facility," "high-performance green building," "operational cost savings," and "zero-net-energy commercial building." These definitions set the technical standards the rest of the law relies on.
This section defines terms used throughout this title on high-performance green buildings.
(1) "Administrator" means the Administrator of General Services.
(2) "Advisory Committee" means the Green Building Advisory Committee.
(3) "Commercial Director*" means the person appointed under section 17081 of this title to lead commercial high-performance green building efforts.
(4) "Consortium" means the High-Performance Green Building Partnership Consortium, a private-sector group formed under section 17092(c)(1) to work with the government on high-performance and zero-net-energy commercial buildings.
(5) "Cost-effective lighting technology" means a lighting technology that either (A) saves real operating money by keeping installed power use to no more than 1 watt per square foot, or (B) appears on an approved federal list and is at least as energy-conserving as this Act's other requirements. It includes lamps, ballasts, luminaires, lighting controls, daylighting, and early use of other highly cost-effective lighting technologies.
(6) "Cost-effective technologies and practices" means a technology or practice that (A) saves real operating money by cutting electricity, fossil fuel, water, or other utility costs — including geothermal heat pumps — (B) follows certain federal acquisition rules, and (C) saves at least as much energy and water as other sections of this title require.
(7) "Federal Director" means the person appointed under section 17092(a) of this title to lead federal high-performance green building efforts.
(8) "Federal facility" means any building built, renovated, leased, or bought — in whole or part — for the federal government to use.
(9) "Operational cost savings" means savings from cutting the ongoing costs of running a building — such as electricity use — through cost-effective technologies and practices or geothermal heat pumps, measured against a set baseline defined in Administrator guidelines. The savings must be enough to pay back the extra upfront cost within 5 years of installation for cost-effective technologies and practices, or as soon as practical for geothermal heat pumps. It includes savings from installing or using such technologies, and from planting shade trees that cut a building's heating, cooling, or lighting needs. It does not include savings from measures a building would likely have adopted anyway, without such a program.
(10) "Geothermal heat pump" means heating or air conditioning technology that uses the ground or groundwater to heat or cool a building, and that meets the EPA's Energy Star program requirements for geothermal heat pumps as of the purchase date.
(11) "GSA facility" means a building, structure, or facility (or group of them) that the Administrator builds — including for lease — renovates, or buys for federal use, or that the Administrator leases for federal use for at least 5 years (or less than 5 years, if the Administrator finds that using cost-effective technologies and practices would still pay for itself). The Administrator may exempt a building that meets a separate legal standard.
(12) "High-performance building" means a building that integrates and optimizes, over its full life cycle, all its major performance traits together — energy conservation, environment, safety, security, durability, accessibility, cost-benefit, productivity, sustainability, function, and operations.
(13) "High-performance green building" means a high-performance building that, compared with similar buildings (measured by federal energy consumption survey data), (A) reduces energy, water, and material use; (B) improves indoor air quality, thermal comfort, lighting, and acoustics that affect occupant health and productivity; (C) reduces harm to the environment over its life cycle, including air and water pollution and waste; (D) increases use of environmentally preferable products, including bio-based, recycled-content, and nontoxic products; (E) increases reuse and recycling opportunities; (F) integrates its systems; (G) is sited and designed to reduce transportation's environmental and energy impact by supporting a range of ways to reach the building; and (H) considers its indoor and outdoor effects on human health and the environment, including worker productivity, the life-cycle impact of materials, and other factors the Federal Director or Commercial Director consider appropriate.
(14) "Life-cycle" means every stage of a high-performance green building's useful life — beginning at the project's conception and continuing through site selection, design, construction, landscaping, commissioning, operation, maintenance, renovation, deconstruction or demolition, removal, and recycling.
(15) "Life-cycle assessment" means a comprehensive evaluation of a product's or service's environmental performance over its whole life — from getting raw materials, through manufacturing, transport, installation, use, reuse, and end-of-life waste management.
(16) "Life-cycle costing" means an economic evaluation method that (A) adds up, over a set study period, the costs of the initial investment (minus resale value), replacements, operations (including energy use), and maintenance and repair, and (B) expresses that total either (i) in present-value terms, if the study period equals the building's longest useful life for its area, or (ii) in annual-value terms, for any other study period.
(17) "Office of Commercial High-Performance Green Buildings" means the office established under section 17081(a) of this title.
(18) "Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings" means the office established under section 17092(a) of this title.
(19) "Practices" means the design, financing, permitting, construction, commissioning, operation, maintenance, and other practices that help achieve zero-net-energy buildings or facilities.
(20) "Zero-net-energy commercial building" means a commercial building designed, constructed, and operated to (A) need a greatly reduced quantity of energy to operate, (B) meet its remaining energy needs from sources that do not produce greenhouse gases, (C) as a result produce no net greenhouse gas emissions, and (D) remain economically viable.
In this title: 1
The term “Administrator” means the Administrator of General Services.
The term “Advisory Committee” means the Green Building Advisory Committee established under section 484.1
The term “Commercial Director” means the individual appointed to the position established under section 17081 of this title.
The term “Consortium” means the High-Performance Green Building Partnership Consortium created in response to section 17092(c)(1) of this title to represent the private sector in a public-private partnership to promote high-performance green buildings and zero-net-energy commercial buildings.
The term “cost-effective lighting technology” means a lighting technology that—
will result in substantial operational cost savings by ensuring an installed consumption of not more than 1 watt per square foot; or
is contained in a list under—
section 8259b of this title;
Federal acquisition regulation 23–203; and
is at least as energy-conserving as required by other provisions of this Act, including the requirements of this title 1 and title III 1 which shall be applicable to the extent that they would achieve greater energy savings than provided under clause (i) or this clause.2
The term “cost-effective lighting technology” includes—
lamps;
ballasts;
luminaires;
lighting controls;
daylighting; and
early use of other highly cost-effective lighting technologies.
The term “cost-effective technologies and practices” means a technology or practice that—
will result in substantial operational cost savings by reducing electricity or fossil fuel consumption, water, or other utility costs, including use of geothermal heat pumps;
complies with the provisions of section 8259b of this title and Federal acquisition regulation 23–203; and
is at least as energy and water conserving as required under this title,1 including sections 431 through 435, and title V,1 including sections 511 through 525, which shall be applicable to the extent that they are more stringent or require greater energy or water savings than required by this section.
The term “Federal Director” means the individual appointed to the position established under section 17092(a) of this title.
The term “Federal facility” means any building that is constructed, renovated, leased, or purchased in part or in whole for use by the Federal Government.
The term “operational cost savings” means a reduction in end-use operational costs through the application of cost-effective technologies and practices or geothermal heat pumps, including a reduction in electricity consumption relative to consumption by the same customer or at the same facility in a given year, as defined in guidelines promulgated by the Administrator pursuant to section 7628(b) of this title, that achieves cost savings sufficient to pay the incremental additional costs of using cost-effective technologies and practices including geothermal heat pumps by not later than the later of the date established under sections 431 through 434,1 or—
for cost-effective technologies and practices, the date that is 5 years after the date of installation; and
for geothermal heat pumps, as soon as practical after the date of installation of the applicable geothermal heat pump.
The term “operational cost savings” includes savings achieved at a facility as a result of—
the installation or use of cost-effective technologies and practices; or
the planting of vegetation that shades the facility and reduces the heating, cooling, or lighting needs of the facility.
The term “operational cost savings” does not include savings from measures that would likely be adopted in the absence of cost-effective technology and practices programs, as determined by the Administrator.
The term “geothermal heat pump” means any heating or air conditioning technology that—
uses the ground or ground water as a thermal energy source to heat, or as a thermal energy sink to cool, a building; and
meets the requirements of the Energy Star program of the Environmental Protection Agency applicable to geothermal heat pumps on the date of purchase of the technology.
The term “GSA facility” means any building, structure, or facility, in whole or in part (including the associated support systems of the building, structure, or facility) that—
is constructed (including facilities constructed for lease), renovated, or purchased, in whole or in part, by the Administrator for use by the Federal Government; or
is leased, in whole or in part, by the Administrator for use by the Federal Government—
except as provided in subclause (II), for a term of not less than 5 years; or
for a term of less than 5 years, if the Administrator determines that use of cost-effective technologies and practices would result in the payback of expenses.
The term “GSA facility” includes any group of buildings, structures, or facilities described in subparagraph (A) (including the associated energy-consuming support systems of the buildings, structures, and facilities).
The Administrator may exempt from the definition of “GSA facility” under this paragraph a building, structure, or facility that meets the requirements of section 8253(c) of this title.
The term “high-performance building” means a building that integrates and optimizes on a life cycle basis all major high performance attributes, including energy conservation, environment, safety, security, durability, accessibility, cost-benefit, productivity, sustainability, functionality, and operational considerations.
The term “high-performance green building” means a high-performance building that, during its life-cycle, as compared with similar buildings (as measured by Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey or Residential Energy Consumption Survey data from the Energy Information Agency)—
reduces energy, water, and material resource use;
improves indoor environmental quality, including reducing indoor pollution, improving thermal comfort, and improving lighting and acoustic environments that affect occupant health and productivity;
reduces negative impacts on the environment throughout the life-cycle of the building, including air and water pollution and waste generation;
increases the use of environmentally preferable products, including biobased, recycled content, and nontoxic products with lower life-cycle impacts;
increases reuse and recycling opportunities;
integrates systems in the building;
reduces the environmental and energy impacts of transportation through building location and site design that support a full range of transportation choices for users of the building; and
considers indoor and outdoor effects of the building on human health and the environment, including—
improvements in worker productivity;
the life-cycle impacts of building materials and operations; and
other factors that the Federal Director or the Commercial Director consider to be appropriate.
The term “life-cycle”, with respect to a high-performance green building, means all stages of the useful life of the building (including components, equipment, systems, and controls of the building) beginning at conception of a high-performance green building project* and continuing through site selection, design, construction, landscaping, commissioning, operation, maintenance, renovation, deconstruction or demolition, removal, and recycling of the high-performance green building.
The term “life-cycle assessment” means a comprehensive system approach for measuring the environmental performance of a product or service over the life of the product or service, beginning at raw materials acquisition and continuing through manufacturing, transportation, installation, use, reuse, and end-of-life waste management.
The term “life-cycle costing”, with respect to a high-performance green building, means a technique of economic evaluation that—
sums, over a given study period, the costs of initial investment (less resale value), replacements, operations (including energy use), and maintenance and repair of an investment decision; and
is expressed—
in present value terms, in the case of a study period equivalent to the longest useful life of the building, determined by taking into consideration the typical life of such a building in the area in which the building is to be located; or
in annual value terms, in the case of any other study period.
The term “Office of Commercial High-Performance Green Buildings” means the Office of Commercial High-Performance Green Buildings established under section 17081(a) of this title.
The term “Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings” means the Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings established under section 17092(a) of this title.
The term “practices” means design, financing, permitting, construction, commissioning, operation and maintenance, and other practices that contribute to achieving zero-net-energy buildings or facilities.
The term “zero-net-energy commercial building” means a commercial building that is designed, constructed, and operated to—
require a greatly reduced quantity of energy to operate;
meet the balance of energy needs from sources of energy that do not produce greenhouse gases;
therefore result in no net emissions of greenhouse gases; and
be economically viable.
Source credit: (Pub. L. 110–140, title IV, § 401, Dec. 19, 2007, 121 Stat. 1596.)
- 2007Enacted · Pub. L. 110-140 · 121 Stat. 1596
A history note hasn’t been published yet. The record shows enactment by Pub. L. 110-140 on 2007-12-19.
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