By now you’ve probably seen the leafy U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification seal. But do you know what it signifies? LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, Certification was created to provide objective guidelines and verification on how to build and renovate buildings such that they meet particular standards in 1) sustainable site development, 2) water savings, 3) energy efficiency, 4) materials selection and 5) indoor environmental quality.1 The impetus for the LEED program was the need for a more universal system in the building industry to measure whether or not a building was “green” or “sustainable.”2 There are rating categories for whole neighborhoods, and for a variety of building types, including Complete Construction, Core and Shell Construction, Commercial Interior Construction, and Existing Buildings Limited Construction.3 In most of these rating categories, projects must meet a variety of prerequisites and then score enough additional points for green building best practices.4
Since the U.S. Green Building Council was started in 1993, LEED has been used to accredit over 100,000 green building professionals worldwide,6 and to certify 1.5 million square feet of building space across 135 countries on a daily basis!7 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), military, NASA, and many other Departments have made commitments to build according to LEED standards.8 According to Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) Sustainable Communities Director and leading green building expert, Kaid Benfield:
It’s not much of a stretch to say that, more than any other single force, LEED has put green buildings on the map and institutionalized building performance measures shown to reduce resource consumption and pollution. A lot of wood, water, and energy has been saved, a lot of pollution has been avoided, and a lot of conditions protective of public health have been adopted because of LEED and because of the hard work of USGBC and their volunteers.9
Despite all of the good that has come from the LEED certification system, there are still many who criticize the standards. First, many of the more progressive environmentalists and green building leaders feel that LEED certification is not demanding enough. They claim that the LEED standards are only slightly better than building code standards because program administrators are afraid that builders will not participate if they perceive that it will be too difficult to obtain certification.10
A more common criticism is that LEED is too focused on environmental points rather than actual building performance. Over at TreeHugger they have called this “The Sin of Valuing Gizmos Over Appropriate Design.”11 Buildings that are rated according to LEED standards are given points based on the energy they are predicted to save, not necessarily on their actual performance.12 One example that LEED critics often point to is the ImaginOn Charlotte, North Carolina building built in 2005. This LEED Silver certified building was projected to use 30% less energy than similarly sized buildings built using traditional methods and materials. Unfortunately, the tenants of the building were not properly tracking their energy use. When a local contractor performed an energy study, they discovered that the building was using over twice as much energy as originally anticipated.13 According to a New York Times Op-Ed:
[A] building’s LEED rating is more like a snapshot taken at its opening, not a promise of performance. Unless local, state and federal agencies do their part to ensure long-term compliance with the program’s ideals, it could end up putting a shiny green stamp on a generation of unsustainable buildings.14
In response to the criticisms leveled at the LEED certification system, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) tried to revise its 2009 standards. Their goal was to place a relatively greater emphasis on “the reduction of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with building systems, transportation, the embodied energy of water, the embodied energy of materials, and where applicable, solid waste.”16 In addition, USGBC CEO Rick Fedrizzi has said that operation is one of the most important factors in the overall energy efficiency of a building: “What really needs to happen is the transformation of the owners and the operators of the buildings to ensure that the building is being operated properly.”17 Perhaps this means that greater emphasis will be placed on post-construction monitoring, which can only help with energy conservation and efficiency.
As much as LEED standards might continue to be improved in the future, it is clear that the rating system has transformed the building industry for the better. Over the course of just a couple of decades, green building went from a small, fragmented movement to a widely available set of practices and protocols.18 Hopefully the standards will only continue to improve.
