LEEDer of the Pack

More and more buildings these days are receiving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), but the LEED standard is no new phenomenon. Believe it or not, the LEED program will turn 10 years old in 2008, and the certification is expanding to create new types of businesses.

So before you set off to create that new green building, here’s a quick summary of the LEED standard:

LEED History

To understand LEED certification is to first learn about the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the organization that developed and maintains the ratings system. The USGBC started in 1993 and spent almost three years working on the LEED standard before releasing it to the public.

The USGBC maintains 75 regional chapters and 11,000 member organizations, with members weighing in on changes to the LEED system. All chapters have a common purpose of transforming the way buildings are designed and built with an emphasis on preserving the environment.

LEED started its development in 1994 with a committee of architects, builders and engineers. It started as one standard for new construction and evolved into six interrelated standards, including:

1. Sustainable Sites
2. Water Efficiency
3. Energy and Atmosphere
4. Materials and Resources
5. Indoor Environmental Quality
6. Innovation and Design Process

Certification Overview

LEED certification is based on the number of “points” that a building is able to achieve in each of the above six areas. The breakdown of how points are distributed is based on the city and/or USGBC chapter, but important features common in LEED-certified buildings include low-flow toilets and nontoxic paint on the walls.

There are four levels of certification, including:

• Certified—40-50% of non-innovation points attained
• Silver—50-60%
• Gold—60-80%
• Platinum—over 80%

Let’s think about this for a minute using the same logic you did when you were in high school. If a building gets a D- on its LEED test, it still qualifies for LEED Gold certification. Attaining a B- will get the top status, while a structure doesn’t even need to receive half of its total points to get the lowest certification.

So for a certification that seems so easy to attain based on the numbers, keep in mind that in North America there were only about 6,000 certified buildings as of April 2007.

Evaluating the System

LEED is recognized as the standard for evaluating green building efforts, but it doesn’t come without some debate from critics. First off, the process for applying for LEED certification is not an inexpensive one. It has been argued that the money spent on attaining this recognition comes at the expense of adding in additional environment-friendly features.

There is also some uncertainty and decision as to which building features are the most important for achieving certification. Nowhere on the USGBC website is it laid out what features are worth what points, which leads to situations where builders must guess which features will grant them the most points in the judging process.

Lastly, the LEED standard has become so popular in recent years that it has been difficult for the USGBC to keep up with the demand. The program is being expanded to rate everything from neighborhoods to schools to retail developments, but it is forced to play catch-up instead of redefining the system for the future.

Regardless, the LEED system is still the standard by which all aspiring green buildings seek to be judged. It’s come a long way in the past nine years, and an LEED standard for healthcare is even currently in development.

Sources:

• Pittsburgh Business Journal
• U.S. Green Building Council
• Wikipedia