This past November, long-running efforts to encourage more sustainable and energy-efficient commercial foodservice operations took a major step forward. That's when new LEED for Retail standards were finalized, a milestone that capped a multi-year effort to realistically apply the nation's most widely recognized building sustainability certification program to commercial spaces like restaurants, which have “process” needs that vary significantly from those of ordinary building areas.

The advance is a significant one for foodservice operators, from large restaurant chains to institutions with major foodservice preparation and serving facilities. It will define what having a “sustainable” foodservice facility means for years to come and will give a big boost to the already rapidly growing interest in more efficient kitchen and foodservice display equipment.

The Different Flavors of LEED

The LEED certification program itself has been evolving since 1993. That's when two pioneering entrepreneurs, David Gottfried and Rick Fedrizzi, co-founded a private 501(c) 3 membership-based non-profit trade organization called the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The Council focused on promoting sustainability in the design and construction of buildings and, in 1994, established the LEED rating and certification program that has since become a standard adopted and adapted across the industry.

Today, LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system that uses third party verification to recognize building performance in areas like energy and water efficiency, CO2 emission reduction, improved indoor environmental quality and other areas. While LEED-certified construction is still the exception rather than the rule, the very existence of the program has tended to increase the awareness of many institutions and corporations in terms of the sustainability issues LEED certification raises.

Originally LEED was a “one size fits all buildings” standard, with all of the limitations that would suggest. In particular, it had major shortcomings in relation to areas like kitchens, which in LEED language are “process intensive,” using energy, water and environmental control systems differently than ordinary building space does.

However, the LEED program evolved over the years to recognize such differences. The new LEED for Retail standard is just one more adaptation: there are now major LEED certification categories for New Construction, Commercial Interiors, Schools, Healthcare and Retail facilities, with sub-categories that recognize renovation and retrofitting projects.

If your organization has chosen to pursue a LEED-certified project, and foodservice facilities are part of it, you are probably working closely with an experienced consultant who is often a LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP). But whether your location is actually aiming for a Gold (or Silver or Platinum) LEED rating — or your organization is simply trying to be more sustainable by making a few energy-saving kitchen equipment purchases — the advent of LEED has raised the bar.

The labeling game

The largest impact LEED standards have had on foodservice operations is in the area of equipment. In particular, specifying highly energy and water efficient appliances, lighting and ventilation systems is a major factor in helping a project meet LEED certification criteria.

Very often, those equipment choices require that equipment specs include the now seemingly ubiquitous Energy Star label, which has caused some to confuse the connection between the two programs.

In fact, the Energy Star label was introduced in 1992 by the Environmental Protection Agency. Its standards have been updated over the years to recognize advances in technology and performance, but its basic idea has remained the same: the Energy Star label certifies that a given piece of equipment meets or exceeds a specific level of efficiency the program has established as being significantly above that of an average unit in the same category.

As of this writing, seven categories of commercial kitchen equipment can feature Energy Star unit ratings. These include steamers, fryers, convection ovens, griddles, reach-in refrigerators/freezer machines, hot holding cabinets and dish machines. (To learn more about these categories and how they apply to commercial foodservice operations, go to www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_find_es_products).

While Energy Star remains a completely separate program from LEED, the LEED program recognizes that Energy Star has become the de facto standard for equipment energy and water efficiency. For the most part, LEED has wisely not tried to “reinvent the wheel” in this area.

So just how is foodservice equipment evaluated to ensure that it can be certified as Energy Star compliant? For answers to this and related questions, we turned to industry guru Don Fisher, president/CEO of San Ramon, CA-based Fisher-Nickel Inc. Fisher-Nickel has been a pioneer in this area for a quarter century and its equipment testing and research activities have become the bedrock upon which many utility companies, state energy authorities and manufacturers have come to base their own standards and criteria.

The company's website (www.fishnick.com) is also a veritable treasure trove of information for operators, including (just for starters) a nine-page “Energy Star Guide for Restaurants/Putting Energy into Profit.”

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