LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. This was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council and offers a group of standards for environmentally sustainable construction. LEED has developed immensely since its establishment in 1998 with more than fourteen thousand (14,000) projects in the U.S and thirty (30) countries totaling 1.062 billion square feet of development area.
LEED’s trademark is its transparent and open process where the technical criteria proposed by the LEED committees are publicly evaluated for approval. The approval process is done by more than 10,000 membership organizations that constitute the U.S. Green Building Council.
All buildings certified by LEED must use resources more efficiently in comparison to conventional buildings that are simply built to code. LEED buildings often times provide a healthier living and working environment which ultimately leads to improved employee comfort and health as well as improved productivity.
The U.S. Green Building Council compiled a list of advantages of applying a LEED strategy which is assorted from water and air quality to solid waste reduction, benefiting occupiers, owners and the society in general.
When a LEED rating is pursued, usually the cost of construction and the initial design would be increased. The cost is higher because of the misunderstanding that may develop with the design professionals who are undertaking the project based on the sustainable construction principles. Time would therefore be required to research all the concepts. These initial higher costs however, can be effectively mitigated by the conservations incurred over time due to the lower than industry standard operational costs – typical of a LEED certified building. Employee productivity gains can be a way of achieving additional economic pay back as they would be working in a healthier environment.
Albeit the deployment of LEED standard has raised an awareness on green building practices, the scoring or rating system is somewhat inclined toward ongoing use of fossil fuels. More than half of the available points in the standard support efficient use of fossil fuels, while only a handful are awarded for the use of sustainable energy sources. The USGBC has given support for the Architecture 2030, which is an effort that has set a goal of using no fossil-fuel, greenhouse gas-emitting energy to operate by 2030.
LEED focuses on the end product in addition to focusing on efficient use of fossil fuels. For example, because leather does not emit Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) they are deemed healthy for environments, disregarding the use of extremely harmful chemicals in the process of tanning leather. Other products that do not use harmful chemicals and focus on more sustainable production do not earn any additional points for their attention to environmental concerns.