November 24, 2008 GreenerBuildings has released a Green Building Impact Report that it describes as the first-ever integrated assessment of the land, water, energy, material and indoor environmental impacts of the LEED for New Construction (LEED NC), Core & Shell (LEED CS) and Existing Building Operations and Maintenance (LEED EBOM) standards.
Green buildings, as represented by the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, are an undisputed market success. In the eight years since the launch of LEED, green has firmly established itself among mainstream leaders in the building sector, representing tens of billions of dollars in value put in place and materials sales. LEED was created to reduce the environmental impacts of the built environment, but until now no comprehensive evaluation of the overall impact of LEED has been conducted.
In this report, the authors attempt to answer the question of whether commercial green buildings live up to their name by engendering demonstrable environmental improvement.
The findings are both encouraging and cautionary. Overall, the report finds, LEED buildings are making a major impact in reducing the overall environmental footprint of individual structures. However, significant additional progress is possible and indeed necessary on both the individual building level and in terms of market penetration if LEED is to contribute in a meaningful way to reducing the environmental footprint of buildings in the US and worldwide.
LEED Certified projects represent more than 6% of new commercial construction, but there has been an astronomical ramp-up in the past year of new project registrations, with new construction sector penetrations approaching 40%. On average, it takes approximately two years from Registration to Certification, with an attrition rate of 25% to 30%.
For more information or a full copy of the report, see the GreenerBuildings Web site.
