LEED certification in a transitional moment

The Greenwash Brigade

I totally agree with Daniel Brook's premise that you can game the LEED Rating System to come up with a LEED Certified project that is decidedly NOT green. And many have questioned individual LEED credits and the equivalency suggested by the point-based system (do 1 point for low VOC carpet and 1 point for a green roof suggest that the two are environmentally equivalent, for instance?).

The question is whether LEED is causing improvement in the environmental performance of our built environment overall, not whether there are limited examples that clearly lie outside of the system's intent. In spite of all its warts, LEED has been, and continues to be, a significant catalyst for change. It has provided an agreed upon, understandable way to ask for a green building. Before LEED, 'green design' and 'sustainability' were fairly esoteric terms in the building industry. LEED is also clearly promoting some healthy competition with college campuses and building portfolio managers scrambling to get their first "LEED Certified" building.

LEED takes sort of a shotgun approach, attempting to address all aspects of the environmental impact of building. I do wonder if the growth in public awareness about global climate change that has occurred largely since LEED was introduced in 2000 will result in the industry transitioning to more of an energy/carbon-focused system which directly addresses global warming emissions.

In light of this growing awareness, and specifically pressure from Architecture 2030, the USGBC did increase the energy efficiency requirement for all LEED projects last year. But recent initiatives focusing exclusively on climate change, such as the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment and the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement seem to be growing at a rate that eclipses even LEED's explosive growth. It will be interesting to see whether carbon footprint supplants LEED certification in the green building arena.

January 8, 2008 by Jim Nicolow
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tags: green building LEED

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Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is president of Siegelbaum & Associates, which specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Increasingly, her focus is on sustainable tourism and green hotels. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst for the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the executive committee of the Northwest Natural Resource Group, which brokers FSC forest certification and landowner business services.

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