I was thumbing through an old copy of the New York Times Magazine recently and came across a short item about the U.S. Green Building Council‘s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification process (better known as LEED certification). LEED has become the standard bearer for green design, making it pretty easy for developers to brand their projects as environmentally friendly by following a checklist of requirements.
The LEED scoring system still has some wrinkles to iron out. While it usually costs developers more money to jump through all the hoops that are necessary to obtain LEED certification, there’s little evidence that a LEED-certified building will actually be more environmentally sustainable than one that hasn’t sought certification.
Here’s what the NYT had to say about LEED:
Developers end up having to bring in a small army of consultants and reviewers to approve every step… At the same time, if you’ve got the cash, LEED is an easy system to game. As critics like to point out, a $395 bike rack and a multimillion-dollar low-energy A.C. system both get one point. Nor does the point system consider regional particularities; two critics wrote in a 2004 paper that “water conservation is more of a priority in hot, dry climates, yet the U.S.G.B.C. awards the same number of credits for water conservation in Seattle as in Phoenix.”
Some other criticisms in the NYT piece are that the LEED process doesn’t take into consideration the life cycle of buildings and the maintenance they will require down the road, and that the system puts forth “proscriptive requirements” that discourage innovation.
The U.S. Green Building Council is responding to criticism, and they’re set to modify standards in January. According to a press release, “points will be allocated differently and reweighed, and the entire process will be flexible to adapt to changing technology, account for regional differences and encourage innovation.”
What’s the benefit of having a single governing entity like the U.S. Green Building Council? Is LEED certification even important anymore?
From your post: “While it usually costs developers more money to jump through all the hoops that are necessary to obtain LEED certification, there’s little evidence that a LEED-certified building will actually be more environmentally sustainable than one that hasn’t sought certification.”
Your quote from the New York times didn’t back this statement up, so how do you justify this statement? There is PLENTY of evidence that LEED certification can make a building more “environmentally sustainable”. If you page through a LEED reference manual, they have documented evidence for EACH AND EVERY LEED CREDIT. This is an irresponsible statement.
To address your original question:
Yes, LEED is more relevant than ever. Is the system perfect? No, it has many flaws–and you have pointed many of them out in your article. But LEED is the best system available at this time, and the USGBC has done a good job of promoting “Green” design and enacting real positive changes in the building industry.
I did leave out a key sentence when quoting the NYT piece:
“The folks at the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee, known as one of the greenest buildings in the Midwest, declined certification because of $75,000 in anticipated excess costs.”
And I’d be willing to bet that there are many other developments following a similar course.
Did Joe put you up to this article? Controversy makes for good blogging…
I’m afraid Joe is too jaded to think LEED was ever relevant. Nice try though.
Just because the building in Milwaukee didn’t have enough money to get their LEED does not make LEED irrelevant. Not that I agree with all the hurdles there are to obtain the accreditation. I think the only thing that would make LEED irrelevant is when the building codes make everything a requirement… and yes LEED has it’s flaws, but it is still a great system.
It sounds like you just don’t like LEED because of the costs involved?
I can’t speak to every aspect that LEED covers but coming from the perspective of a manufacturer in the electrical industry the only thing LEED has done (as well as the EU’s RoHS compliance program) is add cost to the end user. Every manufacturer in my industry already met 99% of every thing in LEED & RoHS we just had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to document it. We past the cost along to the buyer…ENJOY!
I don’t personally dislike LEED, and if I did it wouldn’t necessarily be because of the costs involved. LEED certification seems to be, in some cases, something that can be bought for a price in order to attach a trendy label to a condo development.
I also think there’s some truth to claims that it’s possible to splash around some low-VOC paint and toss a bike rack in (and a few other things), and get recognized as a green development.
The LEED system is often compared to the GPA you get in school. The kids that study communications or nutrition are graded on the same scale as the physics majors at a lot of schools. Does that mean that grading should be abandoned? Probably not, but if I was a physics major watching someone who majored in some squishy subject like communications deliver the valedictory speech, I might feel a little bit cheated.
If LEED is not irrelevant, then it should be. The only purpose it serves is as a conspicuous name-drop, adding nothing of substance.
I remember a few months ago I looked at Brad Pitt’s charity’s website that wants to build affordable housing in New Orleans. They asked for $3,000 donations per house just so they could be certified LEED-compliant (or whatever). Not to add any functionality – just for a stupid certificate!
Surely that 3,000 would be better spent constructing more homes rather than obtaining pieces of paper. This is a similar situation to other buildings – developers will choose style (certification conferring marketing hype) over substance (adding additional devices / methods that actually confer environmental benefits).
Let the people who are willing to pay more to drop names continue to do so. There is a market for LEED certification as there will always be those who want to name drop.
Good for them. I consider myself in the more sensible majority and among those unwilling to pay a price premium to say that my building is LEED certified.
To quote our mayor (on a different subject), LEED strikes me as “silly, silly, silly.”
It’s easy to find fairly devastating critiques of LEED on the Web. Perhaps the most devastating of all is that there are fewer than 250 LEED-certified projects in the entire United States since LEED’s inception in 2000.
Greenbuild is an international event held annually since 2002. About 18,000 people were expected to attend the 2097 international Greenbuild conference in Chicago. It’s just one of dozens of USGBC events held throughout the year.
I’d love to know the energy and environmental costs of transporting people to, during and from all of the LEED conferences and committee meetings and events as compared to the energy savings and positive environmental impacts from LEED-certified projects.
Fewer than 250 projects? Try 10,000 plus Joe.
Sheridan B,
I think you’re talking about registered projects and I’m talking certified US projects.
I got the number from the USGBC site itself. Revisiting that site, it appears that the search maxes out at 250 without telling you that. Sampling a number of states, the number of certified projects appears to be somewhere in excess of 250 and far short of 10,000.
What’s the source of your data?
Of course, at the end of the NYT blurb is the line “To its credit, the U.S.G.B.C. is working hard on a next-generation set of guidelines.”
Exactly what specific aspects of LEED are people finding troublesome? It’s obviously complicated, but so is the City’s building code. And while it costs more up-front to get certified, the long-term energy savings (depending on the price of energy, of course) may make it a smart investment. People buy hybrid cars out of a desire to use less gas, not necessarily because they’ve been hypnotized by some sort of “green marketing” fad.
Finally, this point in the article doesn’t make a lick of sense:
“At the same time, if you’ve got the cash, LEED is an easy system to game. As critics like to point out, a $395 bike rack and a multimillion-dollar low-energy A.C. system both get one point.”
That’s exactly backwards. What that is saying is that people WITHOUT the cash to install say, a multimillion-dollar AC system, can “game” the system by installing a bike rack. But I’m not sure why that’s such a bad thing either – the bike rack(assuming its being used, which can depend on where it is placed) brings environmental benefits vastly out of proportion to its cost, due to the carbon emissions related to driving.
Maybe there’s just too small a number of people qualified to do LEED consulting, and that’s why their fees are high. Have some faith in the marketplace, if the demand for LEED consultants is there but the supply is low, the problem will fix itself.
Carter,
Here’s a link to the original source. The point is clearer in context.
“Have some faith in the marketplace…”
I do have faith in the marketplace which is why LEED is a waste. LEED acts as if it’s ahead of the curve in demanding new products and technology. Once again, from the persepective of my industry, LEED has consistenty acted as if they are the reason my company and its competitors makes energy saving devices like occupancy sensors or dimmer switches when the reality is we made those products 15+ years before LEED existed.
Leed isn’t creating a demand for those products either. Rising energy costs is what is causing us to be more effective in selling those items. Our industry, “the marketplace”, developed that market before there was ever a demand. The free market system does work, get the hell out of its way.
I strongly feel that developers and building owners should be taking strides to make buildings green. I think many of us can agree that improved efficiency, lower operating cost better Indoor Air Quality and construction practices create a superior space to buildings that do not implement theses measures.
The reason for LEED Certification, as with any certification, is that the average consumer is not aware and doesn’t have the time to research every green component of a building. Therefore it’s helpful that there is an outside agency requiring developers to add theses features. I would want an outside authority (i.e. the building department) to inspect an end product before I bought it to ensure a certain quality to the product. I would argue that LEED might not have their system right but that it greatly encourages strides in the right direction.
As, pointed out I do not think that LEED weighs all of the points accurately to portray the environmental impact of each of the points associated with the ranking system. However, if a building is LEED certified the consumer can be assured that certain hoops were jumped through. The USGBC should do a better job at weighing the environmental impacts on the points. I think more recent ranking systems such as the New Homes ranking system does a better job of this that others.
As it relates to cost, many of the increased costs are because the materials purchased are superior to conventional materials. An energy efficient window costs more but also performs better. Also, additional consulting fees can add up. It might be a waste of money for additional consulting fees to fill out the LEED Templates or trying to achieve points with a low environmental impact but without a Certification how would the consumer know if a building is really “green”?
“Our industry, “the marketplace”, developed that market before there was ever a demand.”
George, you don’t have a monopoly on what is and isn’t part of the marketplace. Clearly there is a demand for LEED-certified buildings. Last I checked consumers were still pretty integral to a marketplace.
From an environmental perspective, LEED is a great idea. A building which may have had your (cough) energy-saving dimmer switches might choose to make the extra investment to add solar panels.
“Leed isn’t creating a demand for those products either.”
I’d say it’s more accurately that LEED is a response to an existing – and rising – demand.
Of course the high energy costs have exacerbated this, but people worked to lessen their environmental impact long before the recent surge in energy costs. Not everyone is driven purely by a bottom-line mentality, you know. There are people all over the place who pay extra for curb-side recycling (or like me, haul it to a City recycling site), when it would be much easier to just throw recyclables in the trash.
“Last I checked consumers were still pretty integral to a marketplace…There are people all over the place who pay extra for curb-side recycling (or like me, haul it to a City recycling site), when it would be much easier to just throw recyclables in the trash.”
Correct! And for those consumers energy saving devices for home and office have been available for years. LEED has forced us to jump through hoops and create hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, in paperwork (dead trees – thank you LEED) and they didn’t even create the standards by which these products are measured. The manufactures did. They’re basically causing us to charge the consumer an added premium for our technology. To us LEED is a middle man that adds more cost to our product before it gets to the consumer.
“A building which may have had your (cough) energy-saving dimmer switches might choose to make the extra investment to add solar panels.”
BTW, I’d love to know how many LEED buildings have been built and are currently in use with solar panels in the US today. Where as anyone can go to Home Depot or Menards and get our (cough) dimmer switches and install them.
Let me know when your putting solar panels on the roof of your condo, I’ll be right over with a ladder and my Balck & Decker power drill.
The point-weighing argument isn’t as stark as Mark Boyer and the NYT suggest. One thing you aren’t understanding is that within the LEED system there are credits and there are prerequisties. Prerequisites MUST be met met for certification, and can’t be swapped out for another credit. The “Optimize Energy Performance” prerequisite is based on an energy performance benchmark established by ASHRAE. If a building does not meet this minimum benchmark, it cannot be LEED rated no matter how many bike racks are purchased.
A project that just meets the prerequisites established in LEED will be more “environmentally sustainable” than a typical building. Add a few more of the elective credits to the point of getting rated, and you have a building that is MUCH more environmentally sustainable.