Dear all,

Does anyone know how LEED treats backup heating?

I have a project with a district plant being used as a back up. The proposed design uses heat pumps sized to meet peak heating load. My first thought was to select the baseline system based on fossil fuel heating since the district plant uses fossil fuel. If I do so, I will have to select fossil fuel as primary heating source when I actually have zero fossil fuel consumption in my proposed case, which does not make much sense.? Required treatment of district thermal energy in LEED?NC version 2.2 and LEED for Schools? does not provide any specific guidance when district plant is used as a back up heating source.

However ?CHP Calculation Methodology for LEED-NC v2.0/v2.1 EA Credit 1 ?states that Budget Building heating and cooling plant utilizes the backup energy source(s) of the Proposed Design.
Although I do not have CHP in my project, this led me think I should use fossil fuel as a heating type to select the baseline system type.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Ana