LEED 2009. The article below highlights what is in store-JW
Driven by a timely and renewed focus on energy efficiency, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) unveiled a cadre of changes intended to improve its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification program, the nation's most popular green building rating tool.
The proposed improvements, which were developed over several years and opened to a public comment period last month under the banner LEED 2009, will be refined over the next few months before entering a ballot period in the fall. An official launch is expected in January.
"LEED 2009 resets the bar for green building leadership," USGBC President and CEO Rick Fedrizzi wrote in a letter to LEED constituents. "Over the past eight years, we've moved it steadily forward, evolving the way we measure and rate building performance and doing so against a backdrop of increasing urgency to find solutions to climate change and energy dependence."
Addressing dual objectives, the changes aim to improve certain technical components of LEED as it adjusts to booming demand, and sharpen its focus on reducing energy usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in buildings.
In the biggest organizational adjustment, all commercial platforms of LEED would transition to a 100-point scale from the current 69-point scale, with a total of 110 points offered. Included in the 10 "bonus" points are four regional credits, which would acknowledge unique environmental challenges in different parts of the country.
"We don't want LEED to be a one-size-fits-all ... but we wanted to make sure we didn't have 50 or 500 different versions of LEED out there," says Scot Horst, chair of the LEED Steering Committee that drafted LEED 2009 and a co-founder of 7group, a Pennsylvania-based green building consulting firm.
On the performance side, LEED is continuing to push greater energy efficiency and GHG reductions by increasing the value of credits in those categories, which many believe are devalued in current point allocations. Right now, potentially high-dollar credits associated with the most environmental impact, such as efficient HVAC systems and green roofs, are valued roughly the same as lower impact credits for features like bike racks and carbon dioxide detectors.
Re-weighting credits proposed under LEED 2009 is intended to encourage users to choose more environmentally significant options in order to achieve certification, rather than opting for the easiest and least expensive credits. In a holistic view of a building's environmental impact, "Certain ideas and points are more important than others," Horst explains, citing renewable power and energy efficiency in particular. "The ratio of importance of those points has gone up."
Buildings account for 39 percent of total U.S. energy consumption -- more than the transportation sector -- and 71 percent of the nation's electricity.
The timing of the changes, which come as LEED has established itself as the industry's green building standard, is no accident. "We needed to make some significant improvements, given LEED's popularity," Horst said. "We almost did some of this work way back in 2001. The decision at that time was we can't change too much because the market needs to catch up to it."
But in dramatic fashion, the tables have turned -- nearly to the point where USGBC is now the one trying to catch up.
According to a report by real estate investment manager RREEF, USGBC certified as many LEED projects in a 17-month span in 2006 and 2007 as it did in the first six years of LEED's existence. The Washington, DC-based nonprofit has a backlog of more than 10,000 individual projects totaling 3.5 billion square feet registered for LEED certification according to its latest count, with "dozens more signing up everyday," USGBC said.
Four new LEED platforms have launched since LEED for New Construction (LEED-NC) debuted in 2000, and three more
platforms and a portfolio certification program are currently in pilot. USGBC's membership has increased 10-fold to nearly 15,000 member organizations and 91,000 individuals in that time.
Reflecting that explosive growth, USGBC signed a deal this week to triple its headquarters space in the district to more than 75,000 square feet -- just two years after it signed its last lease. "The U.S. Green Building Council experienced extreme growth that outpaced all expectations," said Sally Wilson, CBRE's global director of environmental strategy that led negotiations for USGBC.
With LEED 2009 now set in motion, some loose ends still need to be tied over the next few months. Aside from tinkering with the proposed changes following the comment period (and a possible second comment period), USGBC has promised to provide more detailed plans on regional credits -- which are being developed with input from its 70-plus local chapters -- and the addition of a life cycle assessment component to LEED that was introduced on a LEED 2009 conference call
last month.
USGBC must also battle perceptions that LEED, which has been criticized for being overly complex, is becoming even more difficult to navigate. Adding to the challenge, the new LEED applies to a much broader range of sectors today than it did just a few years ago, and some of its nitty-gritty technical details must be digested by a much broader group. Chief among that audience is a small army of LEED-Accredited (AP) professionals, comprised of nearly 50,000 real estate brokers, lenders, lawyers, property managers, developers, and architects and engineers -- many of whom are reliant on LEED consulting for business.
At the RealShare Green Buildings Conference held Tuesday in Washington, DC, representatives of several of those professional areas aired concerns over the proposed changes. Several members of the day's final panel, comprised of green building leaders Sally Wilson, Al Skodowski of Transwestern, BOMA Chairman Brenna Walraven of USAA Real Estate Co., Victoria Kahn of ING Clarion Partners and Shelby Christensen of Liberty Property Trust, said that while the merit of LEED 2009 was clear, the need to constantly re-learn the program -- and potentially train others in their firms -- is a demanding proposition.
Christensen said it was challenging to re-train people and re-think the process. Skodowski and Walraven cited the windy path of LEED for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) -- which was created in 2006, tweaked in 2007, re-launched this year as LEED-EB Operations & Maintenance and would now change again under LEED 2009 -- as an example. "Ultimately, LEED is something that needs to progress. But it takes a lot to re-learn this," Skodowski said. "The timing's just a little tough."
Kahn said the industry needs to "roll with the punches," and called LEED 2009 "good news for everybody," to which the panel agreed.
"LEED has evolved as market awareness has increased and this is precisely what 2009 is doing," Wilson said in an email to CoStar News following the conference.
The conversation, one of the day's most intriguing, even garnered an impromptu response from Doug Gatlin, USGBC's vice president of market development, who had returned to his seat after presenting on the new LEED-EB and LEED 2009 a few minutes earlier.
Gatlin recognized the panel's concerns but sought to downplay LEED 2009 as a hardship. LEED scorecards are almost unchanged, he said, and the biggest difference is in point allocations. All current LEED credits will be available under LEED 2009.
"All of these issues are being taken into account. With LEED, it's always been somewhat of a living document," Horst says. "The idea is when you look at LEED today, it won't look significantly different than LEED 2009."
Horst adds that many of the changes, such as credit alignment for consistency across multiple LEED platforms and malleable point allocations to prevent the frequent addition or subtraction of credits, will streamline LEED and make it easier to understand. "Now we have a system set up to very easily improve as we as a building industry improve," he said.
Those technical reforms, including a new "Predictable Development Cycle" being created to allow LEED to evolve on a set schedule, will be necessary. Even as LEED 2009 prepares to launch, initiatives that could significantly alter the program in the future are already taking shape.
"Many corporations are keenly aware of the pending cap and trade legislation," Wilson says, citing a global warming bill that arrived on the Senate floor this week and was mentioned several times at the RealShare conference. "The USGBC has begun to focus on the carbon conversation and I anticipate in the future, LEED will include a carbon reporting aspect."
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