The difference to LEED v4 is that the credit 'Optimized Building Products' only takes into account NON-STRUCTURAL building products in the optimization process.
Why have structural building products been excluded from the optimization process?
Structural materials outweigh non-structural materials by far in a building mass balance, and the stewardship of building products is an important aspect beyond carbon emissions.
The best way would be to include all building materials equal.
Nadav Malin
CEOBuildingGreen, Inc.
LEEDuser Moderator
844 thumbs up
May 24, 2024 - 1:10 pm
Jens--I believe that's because embodied carbon of structure and envelope materials are covered under the "Reduce Embodied Carbon" credit, which also includes a requirement to at least not increase impacts in other LCA areas. This isn't ideal, I agree, but might be a worthwhile compromise for manageability.
Nadav Malin
CEOBuildingGreen, Inc.
LEEDuser Moderator
844 thumbs up
May 24, 2024 - 1:19 pm
Generally, I want to express my strong support for USGBC including the Common Materials Framework structure in this credit. It will take the industry a little time to catch on, but I'm confident that once the calculator is available and third-party data tools have integrated this scoring it will prove to be a good approach.
The point thresholds in Option 1, especially for ID+C, are too high. Many CI projects don't use that many different products.
The terminology is VERY confusing. A "product" is a "product x its score"? Why not just call that a "product score," and label the rows in table 1: "Total product score > 50", "Total product score > 100", etc.?
Similarly, the percent terminology in Option 2 is confusing. Instead of "200% of products" (which is logically meaningless), why not a "weighted average product score of 200" ?
Lona Rerick
Associate PrincipalZGF Architects LLP
2 thumbs up
May 24, 2024 - 4:52 pm
So incredibly glad to see the alignment with the five AIA Materials Pledge impact categories and mindful MATERIALS CMF (Common Materials Framework). It will be important that LEED calculators make it as easy as possible to automatically calculate and get full credit for product certifications that contribute to multiple impact areas.