LEED v3 is the recently launched latest version of the LEED green building program by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Since its launch in 2000, LEED has created unprecedented opportunity and growth in the green building and green jobs sector. The value of LEED as a tool to design, build and operate green spaces is in its consensus-based development, third-party verification, and ability to evolve, which is based on user feedback and building performance data.

Consisting of three key parts, LEED v3 is a flexible and adaptive program.

The first part involves technical advancements made to the LEED rating systems’ credits and points, incorporating a new structure that allows LEED projects to focus on energy use and CO2 emissions.

Second, an upgrade to LEED Online was included that makes the Web-based system faster and easier to use featuring new help options, a more-intuitive user experience, improved data integration and an enhanced ability to aggregate metrics.

A new building certification model was third. It includes an expanded building certification infrastructure using ISO-certified bodies and administered by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). The new model allows for increased capacity, speed and performance for project certifications while maintaining quality and integrity.

LEED 2009

The newest version of the LEED green building rating system, LEED 2009 is made up of a series of technical changes to the LEED credits and points, making the rating system more streamlined while also allowing projects to focus on urgent priorities such as energy use and CO2 emissions reductions. LEED 2009 harmonizes, aligns and reweighs the LEED credits across all the LEED rating systems for commercial and institutional buildings — LEED for New Construction, LEED for Core & Shell, LEED for Commercial Interiors, LEED for Schools, and LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance.

LEED 2009 is not a tear down and rebuild of the existing rating system. In fact, much of it will look the same to veteran users. LEED 2009 is primarily a reorganization of the existing LEED rating systems coupled with several key advancements, including:

• LEED Prerequisite/Credit Alignment and Harmonization
• LEED Credit Weighting
• Regionalization
• Predictable Development Cycle.

LEED Prerequisite/Credit Alignment and Harmonization

Credits and prerequisites from all LEED commercial and institutional rating systems have been consolidated and aligned, drawing on their most effective common denominators, so that credits and prerequisites are consistent across all LEED 2009 rating systems. “It is an elegant solution,” says Scot Horst, USGBC’s senior vice president of LEED. “The scorecard doesn’t look that different.” Necessary precedent-setting and clarifying information from Credit Interpretation Rulings (CIRs) were incorporated into the rating systems. LEED for Homes and LEED for Neighborhood Development will not be changed under LEED 2009.

LEED Credit Weighting

In LEED 2009, the allocation of points between credits is based on the potential environmental impacts and benefits of each credit with respect to a set of impact categories. The impacts are defined as the environmental or human effect of the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the building such as greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel use, toxins and carcinogens, air and water pollutants and indoor environmental conditions. A combination of approaches, including energy modeling, life-cycle assessment and transportation analysis, is used to quantify each type of impact. The resulting allocation of points among credits is called credit weightings.

LEED 2009 uses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s TRACI environmental impact categories as the basis for weighting each credit. TRACI was developed to assist with impact evaluation for life-cycle assessment, industrial ecology, process design and pollution prevention. LEED 2009 also takes into consideration the weightings developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology; these compare impact categories with one another and assign a relative weight to each.

The result of the weightings exercise revealed each credit’s portion of the big picture giving the most value to credits that have the highest potential for making the biggest change. The credits are all intact; they are just worth different amounts. As a result, LEED 2009 will operate on a 100-point scale.

The alignment of the individual rating systems along with the new thresholds and the introduction of the 100-point base scale allow for a more simplified documentation and certification process while also establishing a framework that can accommodate more building types and market-specific requirements over time.

Regionalization

The regional LEED credits encourage addressing specific regional environmental priorities when it comes to the design, construction and operations of buildings in different geographic locations.

“Because environmental priorities differ among various regions of the country — the challenges in the Southeast differ from those in the Northwest, for example — regionally specific credits give LEED a way to directly respond to diverse, regionally grounded issues,” said Brendan Owens, vice president of technical development, USGBC. “The inclusion of these regional LEED credits is the council’s first step toward addressing regional environmental issues.”

With the help of USGBC’s regional councils, chapters and affiliates, credits addressing six specific environmental issues within a region were identified from among the existing LEED credits. In LEED 2009, LEED projects will be able to earn “bonus points” for implementing green building strategies that address the important environmental issues facing their region. A project can be awarded as many as four extra points, one point each for achieving up to four of the six priority credits.

Predictable Development Cycle

LEED 2009 is also set to be developed on a predicable development schedule. Previous versions of the rating system were developed and released on an ongoing basis, but with the predictable schedule, the development timeline is established.

LEED Online

The new LEED Online is designed and built for speed, capacity and performance. Core technology improvements make a faster system in real-world use, and USGBC’s robust beta testing means the system is also more stable. LEED Online’s enhanced user interface makes it easier to use with enough scalability to support future LEED evolutions. The system will benefit from regular updates and upgrades over time, just like desktop computer software, and USGBC will publish change histories and release notes with each significant system update.

LEED Online enables a host of new functionality to make users’ lives easier and more productive, setting the stage for success as projects make their way through the certification process. Veteran users of LEED Online will notice several core improvements right away:

• A cleaner, more attractive user interface.
• Full integration of user account management; users can update their USGBC profiles directly from within LEED Online.
• A built-in feedback mechanism available from all screens for any user to give USGBC comments on LEED Online.

LEED Online offers a host of LEED project management improvements, including:

• Project organization: Any user who is a team member on more than one registered LEED project will be able to sort, view and group projects according to a number of project traits, including location, design or management firm, etc. Projects with similar characteristics can be grouped by those traits and viewed from their own screen.
• Team member administration: The functionality for adding team roles, assigning them to team members, and making credit assignments is more flexible. Most notably, credits are assigned by team member name rather than by project role.
• Credit assignments: It is now simpler and easier to assign one credit to several project team members or to assign several credits to a single team member.
• Status indicators and timeline: The system explains and displays all the steps in the review and certification process more clearly, especially which steps a specific project has completed. The system displays specific dates associated with each phase and step, including the target dates that each review will be returned to the customer.

Building Certification Model

This year, the LEED building certification process has moved to GBCI. More than 17,000 commercial projects now await LEED certification. In order to maintain USGBC’s legacy of ensuring quality and integrity in building certification, third-party certification and verification is vital to the new process.

GBCI administers the LEED certification process through its 10 professional world-class “certification bodies,” or firms that are accredited to ISO standards to certify products and services. These certification bodies manage the review process, ascertain a building’s compliance with LEED, and determine the level of certification for which they qualify. GBCI conducts independent audits to ensure the quality and consistency of the certification reviews. All LEED certification applications are submitted through LEED Online.

Along with the significant changes, USGBC’s education programs have evolved to support GBCI’s LEED credentialing program for professionals. The changes include:

Clearer Learning Paths
An integrated suite of educational offerings provide structured pathways for the pursuit of LEED and green building knowledge. Programs vary from green building and LEED awareness to mastery level, beyond technical reviews.

LEED Professional Credential Support
USGBC will offer resources for professionals securing any of GBCI’s new LEED credentials, including the Green Associate and LEED AP with specialization program. These resources will include online exam strategies courses, study guides, practice exams and continuing education for credential maintenance. Look for these resources to arrive on a rolling basis beginning this summer.

 

Practical Information for Real-Life Implementation

USGBC’s education programs coach professionals on how to apply the LEED rating system to your green projects. Upper-level courses are process-oriented, told through real-life LEED project stories. Additional offerings to support managing the LEED documentation and certification process, including guidance on using the new LEED Online, are being developed and will be available beginning this summer. All upper-level courses include online access to the LEED reference guides.

Expanded Formats

We have developed tools for different learning preferences, and an expanded catalog of education programs is available, including instructor-led workshops; online-anytime courses; webinars; videos, podcasts and articles; LEED exam prep resources, LEED 2009 reference guides and LEED project strategies and case studies.


For more information, visit www.usgbc.org/LEEDv3 and www.gbci.org.

Sidebar: LEED 2009 to require submission of ongoing performance data

One of the new Minimum Performance Requirements requires that projects submit operational performance data on a recurring basis as a precondition to certification.

The purpose of this requirement is to create a data stream on LEED-certified building performance that can be used by owners and operators to optimize their building performance and promote the establishment of energy efficiency goals over the life of the building. In addition, the data collected will inform future development of LEED. “We need data on building performance to guide LEED’s evolution — this data will show us what strategies work and which don’t so we can evolve the credits and prerequisites informed by lessons learned,” said Brendan Owens, USGBC’s vice president of LEED technical development. “This is fundamental to helping us close the performance gap between modeled energy and actual energy use. We know that key to this is the ongoing operations and maintenance protocols found in LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance, and we want project teams begin to see this as a seamless continuation of their project’s LEED life cycle.”

The data reporting requirements are based in part on the successful 2008 study conducted by the New Buildings Institute. The data will be used to continue to establish the value proposition associated with LEED certification. “We learned that LEED buildings perform better than their peers — but there’s still much more that can be done to increase the performance of LEED certified projects and this data will inform LEED and help designers and facility operators build and run efficient buildings,” said Mark Frankel of NBI, one of the principle authors of the 2008 study on LEED building performance.

“LEED was created to transform the way we build and operate buildings with a goal of reducing the impacts of the built environment. The LEED design and construction certifications recognize one piece of a building’s life cycle. We know that buildings can be a huge part of the solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and these new requirements will help USGBC accomplish its goals for addressing the climate crisis,” said Scot Horst, Chair of the LEED Steering Committee.