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What does it mean for a building to be
“LEED-certified?” Does that mean it is a green building?
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design, the U.S. Green Building Council’s national
program for certifying environmentally sustainable design, construction,
and resource-use practices for the American building industry. The organization launched the rating system in 2000
to try to provide the building industry with consistent, credible standards
for what constitutes a green building. Since then, nearly 10,000 different
building projects have become LEED-certified. The program sets
best-practice benchmarks that builders trying to “go green” on
their projects can follow. Once a building or project has been
LEED-certified, it can use the designation as a marketing advantage to
attract buyers or tenants interested in healthy and environmentally safe
working or living spaces. Specific LEED programs focus on several different
kinds of projects, including new commercial construction, major renovation
projects, existing building upgrades and maintenance, residential homes,
neighborhood-development projects, and multiple buildings and campus
building projects, among others. There is also a LEED program for schools,
and the USGBC is in the midst of developing specific programs for retail
business construction, commercial interiors, and health care. Builders trying to achieve LEED certification can
follow checklists developed by the USGBC specific to their kind of
structure or project. Each checklist takes into account five key
sustainability aspects of the design and construction processes:
sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials
selection, and indoor environmental quality. To earn certification, a
building project must meet certain prerequisites and performance benchmarks
(“credits”) within each category. Projects are awarded
Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum certification, depending on the number
of credits they achieve. The LEED program also includes a full suite of
training workshops and a professional-accreditation program to develop and
encourage green-building expertise across the entire building industry.
Thousands of architects, real-estate professionals, facility managers,
engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, construction managers,
lenders, and government officials have been accredited as LEED
professionals. They bring the skills and knowledge they learn through the
program to bear on their own projects and help make the certification
process run as smoothly as possible.
For more
information: U.S. Green Building Council,
www.usgbc.org; World Green Building Council, www.worldgbc.org.
Send questions to Earth Talk, care of E/The Environmental Magazine,
P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881 or e-mail earthtalk@emagazine.com.
This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2007.
