Depending on how we slice the distribution credit points addressing Whole Life Carbon in this new draft of LEED v5 there appears to be:

  • 12 points in LT addressing module B8 User Activities emissions,
  • 8 points in WE addressing module B7 Water and wastewater-related emissions,
  • 25-31 points in EA addressing module B6 Operational energy emissions,
  • 2 points in EA addressing module B1 & C1 for Fugitive leakage emissions of refrigerants and,
  • 9-16 points in MR addressing module A1-A5 Embodied carbon emissions

These weightings do not reflect 3 critical areas LEED v5 must get right:

  1. LEED buildings do not exist in isolation; they are part of the community in which they are sited. TOD projects, urban infill or other strategies to reduce SOV emissions need to be incentivized to address the 60-yr building life before they become locked in.
  2. ​Buildings can be decarbonized with electrification, on-site PVs or just being connected to their regional grid. This is not true for embodied carbon of materials; there is little chance to correct for high, up front carbon emission materials once they are manufactured and installed. We must address this near-term issue by rewarding reuse and other lower carbon construction practices now.
  3. We don't have a good time value of carbon approach in our industry, but we largely agree that dumping all the building's 60-yr life cycle carbon in Day 0 before the building is occupied is worse than building reuse and emitting the same cumulative CO2e over the same 60-yr life of the building is not the same from the Earth's standpoint. Operational emissions even in a slowly decarbonizing electric grid take years to decades to surpass the upfront carbon in building-as-usual design.

Giving the EA credits 2 or 3 times the amount of points as these other key areas as has been proposed is sending the wrong message to industry! In fact, in some regions of the US, it is perversely disincentivizing the correct market signals such as WA, CA and NY where we have decarbonized/decarbonizing electrical grids and a growing understanding to shift focus on materials (and a stunted reaction to transportation-related emissions). 

I implore others to weigh in! Make your voices heard.