Catching Up on Some LEED News from USGBC

2007

Feb

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USGBC announced last week that it is now accepting public comments on both the second draft of the LEED for Schools rating system as well as a pending proposal that all LEED projects seeking certification under LEED-NC, LEED-EB, LEED-CI, or LEED-CS obtain a minimum of two points within the Optimize Energy Performance credit. (This latter proposal was announced at Greenbuild 2006 as part of USGBC's Climate Action commitment, and would potentially become effective next December upon a vote by the local USGBC chapters). The public comment period on LEED for Schools will remain open until February 22 while that for the energy credit proposal will stay open until March 23. USGBC also announced that LEED for Neighborhood Development is now accepting pilot projects until April 6. LEED-ND purports to integrate “the principles of smart growth, new urbanism, and green building into the first national standard for neighborhood design” and its development is a collaborative effort between USGBC, The Congress for the New Urbanism, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. What's most interesting about these announcements is the possibility that compliance with the Optimize Energy Performance (“OEP”) credit will become mandatory in municipalities that have incorporated LEED into their building codes. Under the credit, projects can earn from one to ten LEED credits for reducing energy consumption on a scale that ranges from 10.5 percent (for one credit) to forty-two percent (for ten credits) below the baseline. So, those municipalities may soon require that virtually all construction therein reduce energy consumption by fourteen percent below the ASHRAE 90.1 baseline (seven percent for existing buildings) in order to achieve the requisite two credits contemplated by the proposal. While I’m certainly not arguing against the OEP proposal (in fact, I think it’s critical to the long-term success of LEED that it require projects to improve off the ASHRAE baseline in order to secure certification of any level) I do think it’s a good example of the potential for LEED creep in action and perhaps demonstrative of how municipalities are not considering all the ramifications of incorporating LEED into building codes. Babylon, New York’s LEED legislation, for example, “automatically adopt[s] any future versions [of LEED] promulgated by USGBC.” At this point, it’s unclear whether this language, or language incorporating LEED into the respective building codes of other municipalities, would include the OEP proposal if it were to pass. I mention this scenario here because an analysis performed by the New Buildings Institute of the 420 projects which were certified under LEED-NC as of July 2005 concluded that 72 projects achieved less than two OEP credits. The OEP proposal could thus be a potential area of liability for a substantial percentage of projects that are obligated to comply with LEED under a local building code. As LEED continues to evolve throughout the course of 2007, it will be extremely interesting to observe how municipalities react to USGBC mandates that cost, time, and paperwork-intensive credits be required in order for projects to receive certification.