The latest revision to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (Leed) Green Building Rating System, tentatively entitled Leed 2009, is being touted as a comprehensive overview of the famous standard. Trane applications engineering manager Mick Schwedler discusses the major changes with MEP Middle East.
The Leed 2009 requirements have changed significantly, with increased emphasis on sustainable sites, water efficiency and energy and atmosphere, says Schwedler. So why the perceived need for change, especially considering that Leed really only hit its stride in 2008?
A cursory glimpse at the statistics confirms this; the number of Leed-certified projects increased to over 2000, Leed-registered projects exceed 17,000 and Leed-accredited professionals topped 69,000.
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With such burgeoning growth, one would have thought that Leed would have sat back to enjoy the ride. However, the US Green Building Council (USGBC), the non-profit organisation that developed Leed, had sufficient perspicacity to acknowledge various problems with the existing standard.
In order to claim its pre-eminent status in the increasingly competitive green standards market, the USGBC invested a lot of volunteer and staff time, not to mention funds, to derive at Leed v3, including Leed 2009 and Leed Online v3. The aim was to develop a more harmonious and streamlined rating system.
Scorecards
The Leed 2009 credit point lists, or scorecards, acknowledge energy efficiency and climate change as urgent priorities by juggling the points available so as to reflect environmental impact accurately. The 13 impact categories were derived from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Traci programme (the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts).
The initial weighting applied to each category was based on input from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). For the greenhouse gas emissions category, building energy consumption was based on a combination of CBES, Energy Star and EPA eGRID data. Leed credits were then organised into activity groups based on core building functions. Each activity group represents a group of credits associated with the same issue – hence the building systems activity group, for example, includes credits related to building energy use.
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