Page 55 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

32 GREEN BUILDINGS TODAY

it is said that the certification costs are less expensive than LEED’s costs. (This claim
has not been independently verified.) Because the system is a self-assessment, with-
out a strong third-party review, critics contend that it lacks the rigor and, therefore, the
credibility of LEED.
Along with the USGBC, the Green Building Initiative is an accredited U.S. stan-
dards development organization. A 2006 study by the University of Minnesota com-
pared the credits offered by the two systems and found 80 percent of the available
points in Green Globes are addressed in the LEED-NC version 2.2 (the current stan-
dard) and that 85 percent of the points in LEED-NC version 2.2 are addressed in
Green Globes.* In essence, the standards are virtually identical, but LEED has market
dominance and will likely keep it in the years ahead.
Three non-U.S. rating systems have substantial support in their respective markets:
the Japanese CASBEE system, the British BREEAM, and the Australian Green Star. †
The main standard used in the United Kingdom, BREEAM is supported by the non-
profit Building Research Establishment and has the longest track record of any rating
system. Through early 2008, BREEAM had certified more than 1200 commercial and
institutional buildings, about the same as LEED (but in a country one-fifth the size of
the United States). However, only LEED is supported by the U.S. federal govern-
ment. The GSA report mentioned earlier in this chapter compared LEED with Green
Globes and these three other systems for rating the “green-ness” of a building design
and construction project. Although the study found each of the rating systems has
merits, GSA concluded that LEED “continues to be the most appropriate and credible
sustainable building rating system available for evaluation of GSA projects.” ‡

TYPICAL GREEN BUILDING MEASURES
While there’s no such thing as a “typical” green building, there are specific design and
construction measures that are used in many high-performance buildings. If you are a
designer, understanding these measures will help you work with green builders, build-
ing owners, developers, facility managers, government officials, business clients, non-
profit executives, or just interested stakeholders in a green building program.
Based on an analysis of the first 1015 LEED for New Construction–certified projects,
the following technical measures are those that one might associate with a typical green
building project. To illustrate the use of these measures, I prepared an analysis of 25
§ §
LEED-NC Platinum and 105 LEED-NC Gold projects (Table 2.6). There are more
Platinum and Gold projects, of course, but the scorecards are not readily available.

*“Green Buildings and the Bottom Line,” Building Design & Construction magazine, supplement, pp. 56-57,
November 2006, available at www.bdcnetwork.com, accessed July 31, 2008.
†
U.S. Green Building Council [online], accessed April 22, 2007, https://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?
DocumentID=1916.
‡
U.S. Green Building Council [online], accessed April 22, 2007, https://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?
DocumentID=1916,accessed April 3, 2007.
§
Research by Beth M. Duckles, a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona, based on the USGBC website pub-
lished data through the end of March 2008, www.usgbc.org, accessed July 31, 2008.