BREEAM Lift Credits

BREEAM is widely recognised as the benchmark for sustainable building design, construction, and operation, setting the standard for best practices to measure a building's environmental performance.

A BREEAM assessment evaluates a building's specification, design, construction, and use by comparing recognised performance measures against established benchmarks. These measures represent a wide range of categories and criteria, including energy and ecology.

BREEAM addresses various sustainability and environmental issues, allowing developers, designers, and building managers to demonstrate their building's environmental credentials to clients, planners, and other stakeholders. The BREEAM scoring system is transparent, flexible, easy to understand, and evidence-based, using a straightforward approach to award credits to the building for various energy-efficient aspects. The accumulation of all credits determines the building's final rating.

Acute Elevators has gained a wealth of knowledge on what is required for clients to gain maximum BREEAM credits from their lifts while working on many BREEAM-compliant buildings. It is essential to understandBREEAM requirements to comply and, therefore, qualify for the credits available for lifts.

BREEAM credits are not applicable to Disabled AccessPlatform Lifts or any lift/elevator that is type tested and certified to The Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008 (formerly the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC) and the standard BSEN81-41.

At presentBREEAM only assesses, within the energy section, the installation of conventional lifts that form an integral part of the building.  Although this excludes lifts manufactured to the machinery directive (Platform Lifts)from the assessment criteria, projects specifying this type of lift will not be penalised, as the credits available for the lifts assessment will be omitted from the overall assessment.  Thus, the BREEAM count requirement is reduced by two credits and the whole project score recalculated.

BREEAM offers up to two credits for energy-efficient lifts, provided that the evidence provided demonstrates the installation of such lifts.

Credit 1

1.    “An analysis of transport demand and patterns for the building has been carried out by the design team to determine the optimum number and size of lifts and counterbalancing ratio on the basis of anticipated passenger demand.”

Generally, there is a lift specification issued at tender stage, evidencing the above, the consultant should have carried out a traffic analysis to determine the speed, size and number of lifts required.

2.    “The energy consumption of at least two types of lift or lift strategy, “fit for purpose”, has been estimated and the system with the lowest energy consumption specified.”

In addition to item 1, theConsultant should carry out a product comparison, on at least two systems, to determine the most energy-efficient solution for the specific building. These systems should be capable of handling the passenger demand that has been calculated by the traffic analysis performed as part of Item 1.

If the project has a lift specification, the lift consultant will produce the evidence for Credit 1 and not the lift company. However, if the project has BREEAM requirements but no consultant involved, Acute Elevators can carry out the analysis and determine the lift requirements, specify the lift & produce the evidence required for credit 1.

Credit 2:

Can only be achieved if the correct evidence required to achieve Credit 1 is obtained.

Credit 2 requires specifying the three most energy-efficient features from the following four options:

A. The lift operates in standby mode during off-peak and idle periods, meaning that the power side of the controller and other auxiliary equipment, such as car lighting and ventilation, switch off when the lift is not in motion.

B. Lift motors use a drive controller capable of variable speed, variable voltage control of the drive motor.

C. The lift has a regenerative unit so that energy generated by the lift (due to running up empty and down full) is returned back to the grid or used elsewhere on-site.

D. The lift car uses energy-efficient lighting and display lighting (>60 Lumens/watt or fittings that consume less than 5W e.g.LED’s).

Acute Elevators has developed a range of lift products that have standby mode, variable speed lift motors, and energy-efficient lighting as standard, complying with Items A, B, and D.

For high-rise, multi-occupancy buildings, Item C may prove valuable, a regenerative drive can be added to the lift without removing any other features.

Acute Elevators can provide solutions for low-rise buildings with both MRL traction and MRL hydraulic lifts and for high-rise buildings with both MRL and traditional top-drive systems. Please contact a member of our team to discuss your requirement in more detail.