I was among the more than 25,000 people from 112 countries who attended this year's USGBC Greenbuild Expo held in Chicago. Attendees came looking for products, data, jobs, trends, hope and inspiration. The 10,000 attendees who listened to the Opening Plenary by General Colin L. Powell were certainly offered most of that. Check out http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/ to see one of the projects General Powell has been up to since retirement, and as he puts it, his banishment from the house by his wife soon after he left the armed services.
Photo Copyright Charles Haynes, Flickr
Two of the main themes this year were quantifying LEED’s progress thus far and charting the course for the future. As far as the past, LEED or green / high performance / sustainable buildings – whichever term you like to use – has come a long way in documenting meaningful improvements in the performance of buildings in terms of energy and water use reduction, in addition to the other categories.
The USGBC has seen their efforts move the market. While it’s a very small portion of the market that actually certifies a building, several big users are adopting the program – the GSA (targeting carbon neutral buildings by 2030), large commercial real estate companies, hotel chains, etc. Those who want to be seen as leaders see it as a differentiator and have case study after case study showing how they achieve certification and how it makes economic sense for their organizations.
Many of the criticisms of LEED addressed the lack of meaningful energy reduction requirements in previous versions of the program which have since been eliminated and updated with more stringent prerequisites and credit requirements. However, the anticipated changes expected in the 2012 updates with even more stringent requirements are causing some to wonder how far LEED can push without turning off potential users.
One member of the USGBC mentioned that they understand the concern about impending updates but they are LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, not SQUEED – Status Quo in Energy and Environmental Design.
LEED is also reorganizing in several other ways – moving away from prescriptive requirements toward performance requirements in an effort to streamline the process even more and to integrate more of the strategies. A big goal for 2012 is to eliminate the use of the energy model as an energy consumption measurement tool completed at the end of the project and get it integrated into the process as a design tool.
The USGBC has pushed the envelope at every update to find more users with more innovative approaches. The current system rewards projects for being “less bad” than traditional construction. The goal is to shift this line slowly upward where Platinum-certification is only awarded to buildings that are at least neutral for the environment and eventually a Certified building will need to be at least neutral with all other levels being considered regenerative – or beneficial to the environment.
I think the impending changes seem well thought out and to be moving LEED toward actual meaningful sustainability. However, I recognize comments from those working on military base Government projects or in rural areas that the system seems biased toward projects in big cities. For example, the proposed changes are looking at overall carbon consumption, so if your project cannot achieve the sustainable sites credits for alternative transportation, you will be required to achieve more energy and atmosphere credits. Since the sustainable sites credits are usually pretty cheap or free and the energy and atmosphere credits can get pretty pricey, I see some push back coming. But, big picture, small firm or large, everyone is talking about meeting the 2030 targets and you cannot get there with SQUEED.
As in prior years, the sessions can be purchased from the USGBC for those interested to review. For GS&P staff, they will all soon be available through Excel. At a minimum, I highly recommend General Powell’s Opening Plenary and Paul Hawken’s (of Smith & Hawken fame) Closing Plenary for everyone. These speeches are not about LEED but about moving toward a sustainable prosperity.
What's your take on the evolution of the LEED program? Are the 2012 proposed changes too much or not enough? What sessions at this year's Greenbuild did you find most interesting or helpful?