Poll – Should LEED v4 Credits Have Numbers?

If like a lot of LEED professionals you're used to using shorthand like MRc4 to refer to the recycled content credit, and EAc1 for energy performance, LEED v4 throws a curveball into your jargon.

As presented without fanfare in the online LEED credit library, LEED v4 credits dispense with that numbering. If you are looking for a shorthand way to talk to your project team about "Building product disclosure and optimization - environmental product declarations," you'll have to make do without calling it MRc2, at least on an official basis.

For now, LEEDuser is using credit numbering for LEED v4, but we'd like to know your opinion. Please comment below, and/or take this quick poll.

Why get rid of numbering? Credit number became problematic as soon as USGBC invented a second rating system over 10 years ago. MRc4 may be familiar to many people as Recycled Content in LEED-NC v2009 (or v3 as USGBC is now calling it), but it's familiar to a whole other set of people as MRc4: Sustainable Purchasing—Reduced Mercury in Lamps. Doing away with these numbers solves that problem.

Why keep it? That shorthand was really useful. I can see it now being replaced with everyone doing their own thing. LEEDuser is currently calling the LEED v4 energy credit EAc2: Optimize Energy Performance, but I've also seen it called "OEP" for short, which really threw me off.

What do you think?