Monterrey, Mexico — The U.S. Green Building Council has awarded Carrier Corp.’s Monterrey, Mexico, commercial factory with LEED Gold certification.
Monterrey, Mexico — The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has recognized Carrier Corp. for its commitment to environmental sustainability, awarding the Monterrey, Mexico commercial factory with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Gold certification. The Carrier facility is the first HVAC factory in the world to receive LEED Gold certification. LEED is the preeminent program for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. Carrier Corp. is a unit of United Technologies Corp.
Geraud Darnis, president of Carrier Corp., also notes that the plant is the first industrial facility outside of the U.S. to achieve LEED® Gold for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance™ certification.
Carrier conducted a number of initiatives to achieve LEED Gold certification, including a comprehensive energy audit. Other key projects included converting factory lights to high efficiency, low mercury content bulbs, saving 408 MWh annually and providing a payback of less than 2 years. The factory’s energy consumption from lighting is also reduced by the use of skylights for the factory floor, which provide daylight for over 65% of regularly occupied spaces. To optimize load sharing, large compressors were replaced with smaller compressors, cutting energy waste and resulting in annual savings of about 115 MWh.
In addition to the investments, Carrier also took advantage of free behavior-changing ideas to drive energy savings, such as instituting a night power outage plan, shutting down power in all circuits not used during evening hours. This action saved approximately 160 MWh per year, with no capital investment.
Carrier Corp. is a global leader in high technology heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration solutions. Visit www.carrier.com for more information.