This quarter’s LEED Addenda were released on Wednesday, February 8. USGBC posted the official update here. Our hot take is….
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Green cleaning updates help ease the use of the O+M rating system, while new pilot credits for electrification, decarbonization, and other issues offer new pathways for project teams.
Conducting whole-building life-cycle assessments for LEED is part art, part science. Here are 5 tips and tricks.
As embodied carbon gains more attention, more project teams are pursuing the Building Life-Cycle Impact Reduction credit in LEED v4.0 and v4.1 and choosing option 4, Whole-Building Life-Cycle Assessment. If you are in that boat but wondering where to start, we would like to offer a simple equation.
To conduct a whole-building life-cycle assessment (WBLCA), you need two pieces of information: the quantity of each material and the embodied environmental factor for that material.
Quantity of material x Environmental factor = Embodied environmental impact
In LEED and elsewhere, we need to take decisive and measurable action on social justice issues.
It’s been more than two years since EDI (short for equity, diversity, and inclusion) has become a trend and buzz word, and many organizations have issued a statement to address the EDI challenges within their industries. But through LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has been pioneering social equity in many ways for more than a decade.
Come spring, USGBC will ballot updates to Optimize Energy Performance and Minimum Energy Performance in v4 BD+C and ID+C. Now is your chance to offer feedback on the draft language.
NOTE: We closed comments on this post because the public comment period ended January 13, 2023.
The shift in existing building decarbonization under LEED v5 could be a complete 180 from what happened in v4.
I’m just home from Greenbuild 2022 in San Francisco. I’ve never felt such a palpable sense of urgency—some might say rising panic—at Greenbuild regarding the scale of the challenges before us as an industry when it comes to decarbonization, social justice, and climate adaptation.
The same third-party certifier, GBCI, already reviews LEED and WELL submittals. So why isn’t dual certification more streamlined? The governing orgs tacitly answer that question with an update.
Everyone loves a crosswalk. It can help you get safely across tricky territory. But sometimes you have to ask … why is this territory so tricky in the first place?
USGBC is moving forward on next phase of LEED, with a public comment draft expected next year. Where will it take us on equity, resilience, and more?
LEED v5 development is ramping up, and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is going to need your help to make it happen.
USGBC is planning stringency boosts for Minimum Energy Performance and Optimize Energy Performance under LEED v4 BD+C and ID+C—and it’s different this time.
“LEED projects have a very long tail,” said a U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) official, explaining why the organization will be introducing greater stringency for energy performance prerequisites and credits under LEED v4.
In other words, new construction projects registering today likely won’t get built for a long time and will continue to “exist for many years” after the current version of the rating system has closed. That’s according to Corey Enck, vice president for LEED technical development, who was speaking at a Greenbuild San Francisco session on the future of LEED.
With Peter Templeton staying on at USGBC and GBCI, an exciting new framework is on the horizon.
We’ve known for a long time that the LEED rating systems, though they’ve had a tremendous impact on the global building industry, can’t move the needle fast enough to prevent the most catastrophic climate change impacts.
Sure, you can check the boxes and move on, but do you even know what those product certifications and ecolabels say and mean?
Part of the point of LEED certification is that it should incentivize all the right things. No need to second-guess the requirements: just fulfill those requirements and hang the plaque.
There was a lot of pilot credit shifting in the most recent addenda release, so check before you start counting points.
This quarter’s LEED Addenda were released on Monday, August 1. Outside minor corrections to rating system and reference guide language, here are a few highlights.
Advanced Energy Metering is an overlooked opportunity for CI projects. It’s not that difficult, and it saves tenants money in the long run.
You are running a LEED for Commercial Interiors charette, you are deep into the scorecard, and the Advanced Energy Metering credit comes up. At first glance, it’s easy—just install meters—but then you dig in deeper. Many questions now arise:
Carbon and social issues dominated a recent presentation about the future of LEED—and there’s talk of partial certification.
Last week during a USGBC Live event in Washington, D.C., we got a glimpse of what the technical development staff and LEED Steering Committee are thinking about for the future of LEED. You can gain your own insights from the recently published presentation found at USGBC.org.
Several things seem clear.
Need tips on demonstrating high performance? Infosys hit LEED Platinum with its new HQ, due in part to great IAQ.
Project: Infosys Indianapolis Technology and Innovation Hub
Size: 160,585 ft2
Owner: Infosys
Owner’s Representative (Sustainability): Point Energy Innovations
Architect, LEED Manager (Design), and Landscape Architect: Browning Day
MEP Engineer: Ross & Baruzzini
Structural Engineer: Fink, Roberts & Petrie
Construction Manager: Browning Investments
LEED Manager (Construction): Bravo MCC
Civil Engineer: Cripe Architects & Engineers
Commissioning Authority: Heapy Engineering
Existing building projects must choose between v4 and v4.1. Unlike with the design and construction rating systems, one-off credit substitutions are not allowed.
In this blog post, we provide a rundown of the v4.1 credits to help you navigate the opportunities and drawbacks to pursuing v4.1 compared to v4. Remember: for Operations and Maintenance (O+M) projects, teams must choose between the entire v4 and v4.1 rating systems.
