Standards & Compliance: Energy Star, Superior Energy Performance, STEP Sustainable Travel, PAS 2050:2011

Verbatim Americas, a member of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings group, has earned Energy Star qualification of its new line of PAR-type retrofit LED lamps. Verbatim’s qualified LED retrofit lamp product line includes five lamps ranging in output from 500 lumen and 9 watts to 1000 lumen and 17 watts. According to the company, the lamps consume 80 percent less energy than traditional halogen PAR lamps.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a $3-million Superior Energy Performance (SEP) program that aims to help American manufacturers increase the energy efficiency of domestic facilities. Set for a launch later this year, the voluntary program will provide a step-by-step certification process to help industrial and commercial facilities implement and validate improvements in their energy performance and reduce their energy costs.

The STEP eco-certification standard from Sustainable Travel International (STI) has been officially recognized by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council as an equivalent to the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria sustainability requirements for tourism businesses. The company expects to complete steps two and three of the accreditation process by December 2014, writes Travel Daily News.

PV manufacturer Yingli Green Energy announces that it has completed a carbon footprint lifecycle assessment of its multi-crystalline and mono-crystalline PV modules in accordance to the international carbon footprint standard PAS 2050:2011, a publicly available method for assessing the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of various goods and services. TUV Rheinland Group conducted and verified the assessment.

The 51,000-sq.-ft. Upper Cumberland Regional Health Facility in Cookeville, Tenn., has earned LEED Platinum certification for new facilities. The energy-saving systems of the facility include geothermal heating and PV solar panel arrays which produce 2.5 percent of energy needed operations. The building was built with SOLARBAN 70XL and Solarban 60 solar-control, low-emissivity glasses by PPG Industries. These have a solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) of 0.27 and 0.38, visible light transmittance (VLT) of 64% and 70% and light-to-solar gain (LSG) ratio of 2.37 and 1.85, respectively, writes The A to Z of Materials.