Page 109 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

86 BARRIERS TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE BUILDINGS

TABLE 5.2 PROJECTED RESOURCE SAVINGS IN 125 LEED-NC CERTIFIED
PROJECTS

CERTIFICATION LEVEL AVERAGE ENERGY
(NO. OF PROJECTS) AVERAGE WATER SAVINGS SAVINGS*

Certified 30% 25%
Silver 30% 25%
Gold 30% 44%
Platinum 30% 44%
*Vs. U.S. Department of Energy 2003 Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey. The full
study, “Energy Performance of LEED-NC Buildings,” can be accessed at www.newbuildings.org.

compared with the reference building. However, if the goal of LEED is now to reduce
a building’s carbon dioxide emissions (largely tied to energy use in the building) by
50 percent, then even Gold projects fall a little short. However, the study found that
25 percent of all projects had savings in excess of 50 percent.
What about certifications in some of the newer LEED rating systems, such as LEED
for Core and Shell buildings (LEED-CS), LEED for Commercial Interiors (LEED-CI),
and LEED for Existing Buildings? Table 5.3 shows similar results for them. The pilot
(beta test) versions of each rating system managed to certify between 25 and 30 percent
of the projects, but the results for the “version 2.0” systems are disappointing at this stage.
What do this numbers suggest, for the other LEED rating systems? Let’s look at
them in turn.

LEED FOR CORE AND SHELL

First, LEED for Core and Shell is primarily used in the commercial speculative office
market,∗ typically by large and fairly sophisticated developers; second, by using a
LEED pre-certification for marketing purposes, a developer is pretty much “locked in”
by tenant expectations and lease provisions to producing a project certification at the
end of the project, so one would expect the percentages to be higher. Because these
projects tend to be quite a bit larger than the typical LEED-NC project (average a
†
350,000 square feet vs. 110,000 square feet ), they take longer to build, and so many
of the version 2.0 projects just aren’t finished (and certified) yet. Additionally, at a
350,000-square-foot average, the typical project will cost more than $50 million, so
the “fixed costs” of LEED certification are fairly small. Therefore, because of the mar-
keting advantages LEED-CS confers on a speculative development project, it should

∗To use LEED-CS, a developer must finish no more than 50% of the tenant space upon project completion; this
would typically be done for an anchor tenant. Otherwise, LEED-NC must be used.
†
USGBC LEED project data, April 2007.