By Nancy B. Solomon

There is no question that Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), the green-building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), has been a success. After all, its original mission was one of market transformation. “In my professional career, no other tool has been as powerful in encouraging designers and builders to look at the environmental performance of buildings,” says Bob Berkebile, FAIA, principal of BNIM Architects in Kansas City, Missouri, founding chairman of AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE), and former board member of USGBC.

Today, LEED has virtually become a household word. More and more projects have been registered, and LEED ratings increasingly find their way into marketing brochures distributed by developers, building owners, architects, and contractors. Accredited professionals proudly add “LEED” to their titles, and most significantly, numerous federal agencies and state and local governments require some form of LEED certification. Green architecture is no longer a fringe phenomenon.

Despite the fact that LEED has been—and remains—a critical tool in making this necessary transformation, it’s far from perfect. Recent assessments of LEED from various sources have pointed out some of its more glaring flaws. This doesn’t surprise many of its original developers. Referring to that pivotal moment when the decision was made to release a sustainable measurement tool that would address commercial office buildings, Berkebile recalls that the USGBC volunteers “knew that it was clumsy and limited, and many wanted to wait until it could be put on more scientific footing, but more wanted to get something out quickly.” Berkebile continues, “What was shocking was that many agencies and cities so quickly embraced it as their tool, not realizing that it was not regional, did not do life-cycle analysis, and was focused on corporate buildings.”

The ABCs of LEED
In the early 1990s, many facets of the building sector appeared skeptical—if not outright hostile—about the green movement. The construction industry, like a tanker cruising in one direction, was not in a position to quickly or easily turn 180-degrees. For example, some building-product manufacturers, unprepared for questions regarding the environmental impact of their materials, were fearful of releasing proprietary information. And contractors, accustomed to certain business practices, saw no financial incentives in changing their ways. Although scientific evidence suggested that standard construction processes contributed to environmental degradation, no one was able to clearly quantify which methods were worse or which alternatives were better. The industry was still groping for a widely accepted definition and measurement of green building. Many sought a safe forum within which the different facets could consider the economical, environmental, and social costs and benefits generated by various design and construction options and could forge a path through the many unknowns to establish a workable, positive action plan.

The USGBC was formed in 1993 as a coalition of a handful of building-related organizations to serve this role. By 1995, staff and volunteers began to develop a digital measuring tool for sustainable buildings.Version 1.0 of LEED for New Construction (LEED-NC) was piloted in 1999, and version 2.0 publicly launched in March 2000. Since then, about 1,900 projects have registered to use LEED-NC, and another 200 have been certified under it.

The rating system is divided into six categories. Five address specific environmental concerns—sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality—and one is set aside for innovations that do not fit neatly in the others. The categories are broken down into specific design goals that have the potential to improve a building’s environmental performance within that area of focus. Some of these goals are considered prerequisites to any LEED certification. Others are optional. Whether required or optional, each goal is worth one point. Certification is based on the evaluation of the design team’s intent in improving the building’s performance. For a project to be certified, 26 points must be achieved; 33 points for silver; 39 points for gold; and 52 points for platinum. A total of 69 points is theoretically possible.

Projects register early in the design process and receive tools to assist with documenting project performance. The current fees range from $750 for small projects (less than 75,000 square feet) that are submitted by members to $3,750 for large projects (greater than 300,000 square feet) that are submitted by nonmembers. A separate fee, ranging from $1,500 to $7,500, is charged at the time project documentation is presented for certification review. Thus, the total certification fees run from $2,250 for a member’s small project to $11,250 for a nonmember’s large project.

From the onset, USGBC recognized that LEED would have to evolve over time. LEED 2.1 came out in November 2002 to streamline the documentation process. In addition, starting in 1999, USGBC began to address the needs of different building markets by developing more than one LEED product. Spinning off the basic template for new construction, USGBC began to develop other rating systems for existing buildings (EB), commercial interiors (CI), core and shell projects (CS), homes (H), and neighborhood development (ND).

Assessing The Assessment Tool
Now that LEED has been available in one form or another for some five years, it’s appropriate that the system has been reviewed externally and internally for various purposes. Among others, Chris Scheuer and Gregory Keoleian of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan evaluated LEED in a report for the National Institute of Standards and Technology titled “Evaluation of LEED Using Life-Cycle Assessment Methods,” which was published in September 2002.

Lisa Fay Matthiessen and Peter Morris of Davis Langdon analyzed the cost of green projects, including both those that did seek LEED certification and those that did not, and released their findings in a July 2004 document called “Costing Green: A Comprehensive Cost Database and Budgeting Methodology.”

This year, Auden Schendler, director of environmental affairs at Aspen Skiing Company, and Randy Udall of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, both in Aspen, Colorado, coauthored a critique of LEED, called “LEED is Broken … Let’s Fix It,” that reads like a call to arms. And, although more politic in tone, Jay Stein and Rachel Reiss of Platts, a subscription Web division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, in their “Ensuring the Sustainability of Sustainability Design: What Designers Need to Know About LEED” point out inconsistencies and unknowns in the LEED system and suggest ways for designers to work around them.

Two Big Glitches
In its laudable desire to create a national rating protocol that could be easily understood and applied by all, USGBC developed a simple, universal system in which one goal, or credit, receives one point. From this seemingly reasonable structure, however, comes what appears to be two of the most fundamental criticisms of the current LEED framework: its bioregional insensitivity and its relatively tenuous connection to life-cycle analysis.

In truth, many sustainable design strategies are regional in character. They must take into account local climate, geography, resources, wildlife, and habitat. As Stein and Reiss note, “… water conservation is more of a priority in hot, dry climates, yet the USGBC awards the same number of credits for water conservation in Seattle as in Phoenix … .” One unintended consequence is that less environmentally conscientious design teams may choose the least expensive strategies recognized by LEED to get the respective credits, even though the implementation of those strategies may not substantially improve the project’s sustainable contribution.

Life-cycle analysis, or LCA, refers to the scientific discipline of measuring the material resources and energy consumed, and the environmental impact created, by a particular product throughout its life. By comparing this data for alternative products, designers could—at least in theory—select the materials and components that cause the least environmental damage. But LEED’s one-point-per-credit structure doesn’t encourage this more sophisticated analysis. Stein and Reiss continue, “… when designing renovation projects, developers can save more material resources by reusing 75 percent of an existing building’s structure and shell … than by incorporating at least 5 percent of salvaged or reused building materials, but both strategies earn one point in the LEED rating.”

Additional Concerns
Many accuse LEED of being too bureaucratic. Some complain about the time and paperwork involved in documenting applicable strategies. Others point to USGBC’s reliance on just one wood certification program—Forest Stewardship Council—as too narrow-minded. And yet others describe experiences in which LEED certifiers got so bogged down by technical details that they lost sight of the tremendous environmental progress being made right before their eyes by noteworthy design and practice strategies.

The list of complaints and suggestions go on—from frustration with the cost of pursuing certification and a confusing energy-modeling protocol to a proposal that the final evaluation be based on environmental-health indicators (from habitat diversity to water quality) after the building is up and running.

Peer Pressure
In addition to external critiques, LEED is facing its first potential competitor—Green Globes, a Web-based sustainable design tool for new commercial construction. First released for the Canadian market several years ago, Green Globes was adapted and brought to the U.S. in 2004 by the Green Building Initiative (www.thegbi.org), which got its start working with the National Association of Home Builders to promote the association’s Model Green Home Building Guidelines. In a March 2005 article in Environmental Building News, Nadav Malin wrote that “GBI is supported by the Wood Promotion Network and a number of other industry groups that object to some provisions in LEED … .”

Although Green Globes offers some features not currently in LEED—including its online platform and links to energy-modeling and LCA software tools—it still lacks many of the characteristics that give LEED its strength. According to Vivian Manasc of Manasc Isaac Architects in Edmonton, Alberta, a founding member of Canada’s Green Building Council, “No other rating system is as broadly based in the marketplace as is LEED. With USGBC’s 4,000-plus members getting to vote on what is in the rating system, LEED has large public input. It’s easy to write an elegant system as long as you don’t have to deal with the messiness of the marketplace.”

USGBC Plans On The Horizon
To a great extent, LEED is suffering from its own success. Because there was such a great need for environmental guidance, people latched onto it so quickly—and demanded so many versions for different building types—that USGBC has yet to have enough time and resources to fully refine and add depth to the original model. Nonetheless, says Peter Templeton, USGBC director of LEED and international programs, “We are very much listening to the feedback.”

Templeton believes some concerns will be addressed in LEED 2.2, which is currently under development for tentative release in the fall. For example, this version will reference the 2004 edition of ASHRAE 90.1, thereby avoiding the vexing energy-modeling problem created by the 1999 version of the standard. It will also include an online tool that promises to be more user-friendly and cut down on the paperwork. Templeton expects other changes in the documentation and review process to make it easier for applicants to cope with the administrative process. And he anticipates some refinement in the credits themselves.

Larger, more structural plans are being considered down the road for LEED version 3.0, which Nigel Howard, vice president of LEED and international programs at USGBC, believes will be a template toward which all the LEED products can gradually progress according to their respective timetables. Says Howard, “We don’t envision making LEED 3.0 more stringent—but we want to make it much smarter.”

As an example, Howard suggests an ecological index for sustainable sites. In this scenario, there could be a greater range of possible points, depending on the potential impact of a project on its local habitat. A project built on a derelict site with no species of flora and fauna will show a net improvement—and therefore earn more points—if part of the area is landscaped. And a project built on woodland could be penalized to a greater extent than one built on farmland, because the original woodland would have had far more ecological diversity to start with than the farmland, and therefore the construction would have a greater negative effect on site conditions.

Howard suggests that LEED will be increasingly underpinned by LCA-type thinking, although he is quick to point out that some important sustainable design issues are not typically addressed by LCA. “Traditional LCA has focused on materials and products,” he explains. It tends to look at global impact (such as loss of natural resources and toxic emissions) rather than local impact (such as storm-water management and light pollution) or interior consequences (such as thermal comfort and views of nature). Searching for the right mix, USGBC recently established a committee to consider the role of LCA within LEED and the appropriate methodology, data, and tools that would be needed to make it a reality.

Last, but not least, Howard expects that LEED 3.0 will establish bioregionally weighted credits in order to reward those strategies that offer environmental benefits appropriate to a specific locale.
The future of green

It’s hard to know if USGBC’s anticipated changes will satisfy all the critics, or come quickly enough for them. But those who have long been at the forefront of this movement take a broad view of the situation. Practitioners like Bill Reed, AIA, vice president of integrative design for Natural Logic in Arlington, Massachusetts, see LEED as part of a larger, more comprehensive, and more far-reaching process. When potential clients call him about doing a LEED project, he tells them, “We don’t just do LEED. We work at the restorative level.” The fact that people are calling and asking the questions is demonstration enough that LEED has been a resounding success. “I think LEED is serving its intended purpose,” says Reed, “but it is not the ultimate purpose.”