I was driving my kids to school when I noticed a construction site with a big board that read ‘Future Site of a Sustainable LEED Certified Green Building’. It is encouraging to note that green standards are finally not just ‘words’ but translated to ‘actions’.
LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a standard for measuring building sustainability and demonstrating that a construction project is truly ‘green’. The LEED green building rating system is developed and administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a Washington D.C. based, nonprofit coalition of building industry leaders. It is designed to augment environmental performance of a building design and encourage construction practices towards sustainable design. In essence, it improves health of building occupants and reduces the negative environmental impacts of a building construction.
LEED rating system is comprised of six different criteria – water usage efficiency, energy, materials, indoor air quality, design process innovation and sustainable site. Upon completion of a building construction, representative from the Green Building Council reviews the supporting documentation and awards points.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
This is a very interesting topic, being able to measure how "green" a project is can help to set standards and maybe encourage more companies to look into this. In your post, you mentioned awards points. What exactly does that mean? What did the company earn for usng this LEED rating?
ReplyDeletePoints are awarded based on the compliance level in the 6 areas mentioned in the post. Number of points determines the level of certification. There are 4 levels - Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
ReplyDeleteHope this helps!
Thank you for sharing the information.
ReplyDeleteGreen standard is developing a lot and it is really a great thing that, now it is not just limited to "words" but, it is being translated to "action".
There are number of companies who are now a days, focusing on making different green educational videos which is helping in the construction of green building both reducing the negative impact on environment and by protecting the health of building occupant and while surfing on internet, I came across a site named as logical green institute who is providing the service of innovation in design LEED for the promotion of green project attributes.