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LEED Marches Forward

Penny Bonda -- Interior Design, 12/5/2006 11:39:00 AM

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), USGBC’s green building rating system that has transformed the way designers, contractors and suppliers think about buildings, is changing. This isn’t news. LEED is not and will never be a static document but rather one subject to evolving scientific thought, emerging technologies and procedural modifications. Hence, the labeling of LEED by versions such as NC v2.2, CI v2.0 and so on. Next up? LEED v3.0.

The hundreds of design teams registering and certifying green buildings and interior spaces have been change agents, both demanding fixes and providing the innovations that inevitably raise the bar. The volunteers on the LEED product committees and technical advisory groups are also primary drivers of the ongoing efforts as they uncover flaws in the current system and concurrently seek to implement improvements. These groups, together with staff direction, have largely written the existing rating systems. However, USGBC has invited wider input into the v3 process from its membership, primarily through its chapters.

This initiative, including an outline of v3’s development methodology, was presented by Scot Horst, co-chair of the LEED Steering Committee, at Greenbuild 2006 in Denver.

Throughout the summer, USGBC with the support of its chapters reached out to the community to listen and learn what its members and LEED users thought needed to be incorporated into LEED v3. Stakeholders engaged included LEED committee leaders and "power users," government representatives and local thought leaders through 38 chapter events held around the country.

From that effort, more than 1500 individual ideas for advancing the LEED Green Building Rating System emerged. Each of those ideas was grouped into one of three "goal areas" defined by the LEED Executive Group, which is charged with stewarding program development. (The LEED Executive group is composed of two representatives from the Board - Kevin Hydes and Sandy Wiggins, two representatives from the LEED Steering Committee - Scot Horst and Joel Todd, and two representatives from staff - Rick Fedrizzi and Tom Hicks.)

The three goal areas are:

Business Improvements (like delivery models, customer service, and knowledge base)
Market Expansion (like fostering new Green Building Councils, and reaching out to new industry segments)
Performance Extensions (like LCA, and other technical and scientific advancements)

Of the 1500 ideas for advancements in LEED that emerged, several themes surfaced. They include:

Harmonizing & aligning all LEED credits across all LEED rating systems to address the drift that has occurred among similar credits in the different rating systems, and to potentially incorporate the new ideas and expanded criteria being developed through LEED for Homes and Neighborhood Developments into other rating systems.
Developing new user-oriented tools
Regionalization and bioregional weighting
Performance-based overlays (essentially, roadmaps for how to use LEED if issue-oriented imperatives, such as carbon emissions reduction or stormwater management, are a goal.)
User generated content—a "wikipedia"-like approach to sharing LEED best practices and other ideas.
Incorporating lifecycle assessment criteria, an effort that is well underway supported by an expert consultant.

USGBC's outreach effort also makes clear that the context and challenges in which LEED v3 will be undertaken have shifted from what they were 10 years ago when LEED's development was first undertaken. Today, as our society moves beyond peak oil, we face the prospect of having to choose "food or fuel." For the first time in human history, more of us live in cities than in rural areas, water scarcity may be our next challenge, and we face the very urgent and pressing threat of climate change.

In the whole of the effort, and going forward, LEED v3 will be shaped

by USGBC's Guiding Principles that are based on the essential values of sustainability, equity, inclusiveness, progress and connectedness. The outcome of the effort will be to increase LEED's performance, capacity, and speed.

Of utmost importance to keep in mind is that LEED v3 is not an event -it's the introduction of a continuous improvement cycle into the LEED

development process. While USGBC's volunteer committees advance LEED v3, the community of users will be able to continue to use current

LEED programs, and will be able to make a seamless transition to updated versions of the rating systems in the future.

At Greenbuild USGBC also announced plans to parlay LEED’s popularity and influence into concrete steps toward fighting climate change. According to president Rick Fedrizzi, subject to USGBC’s customary approvals, beginning in 2007 LEED buildings will have to meet carbon dioxide emission reductions and achieve energy optimization prerequisites. Also, since the greenest buildings save the most energy, all platinum certified projects will receive certification fee refunds and, to encourage sustainably responsible operations and maintenance, all NC and Core and Shell certified buildings will be automatically registered for LEED for Existing Buildings. USGBC seems to have gotten it right. These "immediate and measurable" changes to LEED were greeted with enthusiasm and approval.