LEED and The Future of Green Buildings
Jill Carlisle¸¸¸`
INTRODUCTION
Our built environment has quite the significant impact on shaping individual’s health and outlook on life. Think about the area you grew up in; how would your personality and life path be different if you grew up in a different town with different people, values, infrastructure, organization, etc.? And did where you grew up influence you to seek new culture and values?
How a community is structured with respect to safety, sustainability, functionality, and unity has a significant impact on culture. The US Green Building Council has these exact values in mind as their mission is “to transform how buildings and communities are designed, built, and operated to create thriving, healthy, equitable, and resilient places that advance human and environmental wellbeing” [1]. In more simple terms, this organization advocates for sustainable buildings by working with policy makers and incentivizing green buildings using LEED certification. While transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards a green future is a complicated endeavor, the LEED certification program embodies sustainability and community engagement, integrating the values I believe the world needs to move towards a healthy future.
WHAT IS LEED?
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the most used green building rating system around the world with a structure for certification that focuses on health, efficiency, and cost-saving measures [1]. While these values are a priority for almost all current construction projects, LEED certification is critical in analyzing the impacts on climate, environments, and human safety as well as the harmonious nature of the operation and community within and surrounding the infrastructure.
The specific quantifiable criteria to obtain this certification is constantly adapting to our changing world since it was established in 1998. Qualifying for LEED certification requires very detailed planning, documentation, and mathematical analysis, as it is meaningful to tell the world with certainty that a piece of infrastructure is good for the environment and its surrounding communities. LEED continues this comprehensive effort by requiring recertification every few years. Thus, this is quite the headache for city planners and developers with a sustainable intention, even though this type of adaptation is essential for any of these green measures to remain relevant.
The current updated version of LEED, LEED v5, is noted to address the growing urgency of climate change by ensuring novel information and technologies make it to policy makers, communities, and developers in simple, comprehensible language. LEED v5 emphasizes the importance of mitigation in tandem with adaption, or preventing carbon emissions while adapting to climate effects. The US Green Building Council specifically updates their program in alignment with the UN’s Paris Climate Accords, which is an international climate change treaty adopted in December 2015 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, France [1].
While this agreement is quite detailed in what goals and changes countries should implement, the overarching goal is to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and “limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels” [2]. From NASA’s ongoing climate analysis, the current temperature rise is about 1.1°C since 1880, or the beginning of the Industrial Revolution [3]. The current climate change mitigation plans and strategies are aggressive, but it is also important to consider that climate effects are delayed from carbon emissions. In other words, even if we were able to stop industrial carbon emissions at this very moment, the climate would continue to warm. Furthermore, the air isn’t just getting warmer day to day, the rising temperatures are causing a cascade of extreme weather events and disturbance to ecosystems. The USGBC structures their initiatives to prevent this catastrophic fate, especially with LEED which incentivizes some of that responsibility to be put on other companies and organizations.
GREEN BUILDINGS IN ACTION
As of October 2022, there were over 100,000 LEED certified structures in the world, spanning to every continent (except Antarctica) and sectors such as residential, business, transportation, and education [1]. Each one of these certified pieces of infrastructure tailors its improvements and practices to align with the quantifiable environmental standards along with its purpose for the surrounding community. While it is difficult to outline what the LEED “checklist” would be for approval of any LEED building, arguably the most famous building in the US is setting a model for this achievement.
The iconic Empire State Building has been described as “a symbol of technology, imagination, and ambition” since its establishment in 1931. Over the past 10 years, the building has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a rebuilding program that led it to achieve its LEED Gold certification [4]. The Empire State Building is a unique and important case to analyze in that it is much more difficult to adapt an existing building, let alone one that is nearing 100 years old. Driving towards a future of green buildings, we must have significant space for retrofitting existing infrastructure to meet sustainable guidelines as we cannot rebuild the entire world.
In the case of the Empire State Building, the bulk of their investments were in energy efficient retrofits, which are essentially an umbrella term for any replacement/improvement of a buildings equipment to optimize energy usage. More specifically, they optimized “everything, from our elevators, which recapture energy that would be lost as heat, to our radiators, which use reflective barriers to reduce heat loss into the air” [4]. Some other highlights of these retrofits are an adaptive lighting system that dims according to natural light and windows, all 6,514 of them, that increase energy performance. Separate from these reconstructions, the Empire State Building made health and community wellness a priority; these guidelines include green cleaning and regular indoor quality testing alongside ensuring daylight, views, and discounted fitness centers for all occupants [4]. These are the unique type of investments the LEED certification process wants to get at, not just reducing carbon emissions but making efforts towards improving individuals’ health and happiness.
As a whole, these energy retrofits reduced the Empire State Building’s energy consumption by greater than 38% [4]. This saving of energy greatly reduces carbon emissions as well as saves money; the building is saving about $4.4 million each year, easily covering the costs of these improvements in a few years [1]. While these achievements are undeniably impactful, further investments were required to give the Empire State Building the LEED gold certification and “carbon neutral” title.
In January 2011, the Empire State Building trust committed to buying carbon offsets that total to 55 million kilowatt hours per year [1]. Essentially carbon offsets, or carbon credits, are an instrument to receive credit for essentially investing in some other entity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These entities can offset carbon in nature by preserving forests and expanding regenerative agriculture or by using engineering solutions which involve avoiding carbon emissions totally (renewable energy) or direct capture of carbon (carbon sequestration). However, the caveat with the use of this system is that it is not sustainable on a long-term timeline.
As sustainability and climate change mitigation goals are nearing (the UN has aggressive targets for 2030 and 2050), many other large organizations are approaching their net zero targets [5]. Purchasing carbon credits are an opportunity for an increasing number of companies to receive recognition for reducing carbon emissions and reaching the designation of having “net zero emissions,” when in actuality the company itself could continue releasing emissions. This is a controversial way to receive credit for being sustainable because it gives large, wealthy organizations the ability to “buy their way out” of becoming totally green.
Based on Harvard Business Review, it is clear that “the carbon credit market is far too small to accommodate the dramatic carbon reductions necessary to meet companies’ net-zero goals” or to meet the goals the UN set by 2050 to avoid the irreversible effects of climate change [5]. So, while the Empire State Buildings generous investments in carbon credits will make a positive environmental impact, this aspect of their sustainable improvements is not the best model for other large entities investing in new construction that have capabilities to access newer, more efficient technologies. This is where I think the USGBC needs to utilize LEED to continue to update criteria that upholds their climate goals.
IS LEED CERTIFICATION THE RIGHT DIRECTION FOR OUR FUTURE?
As a whole, the efforts of the UN, the USGBC, and individual companies need to be aggressive in looking towards the future of communities and our environment. LEED criteria, especially LEED v5, will become increasingly important to the intersection of our built environment, sustainable practices, and collective climate goals. As LEED certification has become an achievement that entities increasingly value mainly for positive public perception, it also becomes important to remind people of the original reason this organization was created: to ultimately reach climate goals while setting up a future of sustainability and community engagement. But how do you make people care?
Looking at the incentivization structure of green buildings, I believe it is essential to keep a careful balance between making it simple enough to encourage sustainable practices and aggressive enough to actually be impactful towards our crucial climate goals. Evaluating specifically LEED criteria, the Empire State Building is an example of the “loophole” of carbon credits, which seems to undermine the great work that the USGBC does. On the other hand, discouraging this practice could discourage entities like the Empire State Building from caring about sustainability at all. Historically and in our modern world, it seems incentives most commonly come in the form of monetary benefits and/or positive impacts on reputation. The USGBC currently targets tax credits and expedited permits as encouragement for those intending on and who have received certification [1]. While this structure seems to be effective for large projects in the process of development and construction, this is not enough to motivate smaller and existing structures to invest in energy efficient improvements.
On a global scale, reaching community health and climate goals is going to take an extensive, unified effort using the wholistic approach of USGBC and LEED in tandem with more far-reaching entities, like the UN. Investing in LEED should continue to be a priority, but stringent policies are key across countries and governments. This involves progressive regulations as well as significant investments in research and development in green technologies. Another, and probably the most important aspect, is developing awareness and a sense of responsibility in our society. People need to take some power into their own hands, making strides in their personal lives to be more thoughtful towards the environment and to advocate for the progressive changes needed to save the places that shaped them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] USGBC, “USGBC | U.S. Green Building Council,” Usgbc.org, 2019. https://www.usgbc.org/
[2] United Nations, “The Paris Agreement,” United Nations Climate Change, 2023. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement
[3] NASA, “World of Change: Global Temperatures,” Earth Observatory, Jan. 29, 2022. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/global-temperatures
[4] “Energy Efficiency & Sustainability | Empire State Building,” www.esbnyc.com. https://www.esbnyc.com/about/sustainability
[5] V. R. Walsh and M. W. Toffel, “What Every Leader Needs to Know About Carbon Offsets,” Harvard Business Review, Dec. 15, 2023. https://hbr.org/2023/12/what-every-leader-needs-to-know-about-carbon-offsets
