LEEDing Us Astray?

Top green-building system is in desperate need of repair 11

This piece is excerpted from the essay "LEED Is Broken; Let's Fix It." The full essay can be found here.

Pan of green gables.

Once the narrow province of hippies in beads and Birkenstocks, the green-building world has in the last five years blossomed and taken on a professional sheen. That's thanks in large part to the U.S. Green Building Council and its flagship program for rating commercial buildings' environmental performance -- LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

"Green building" was once all in the eye of the claimant, but LEED changed that, creating a national standard for green buildings where none existed before, meeting pent-up demand for reliable information with a rigorous rating system and a checklist for going green. The USGBC has been enormously successful at publicizing the need for, and benefits of, greener buildings. Interest in green building is exploding, with some municipalities, states, and corporations adopting LEED as a standard. Thanks to the USGBC and LEED, we now have momentum, media attention, motivated clients, and a broad understanding of green building.

LEED is a design process that should, in theory, produce buildings that conserve resources, reduce operating costs and pollution, help address global warming, improve marketability and durability, preserve the ozone layer, protect occupant health, and improve worker productivity. When the program was launched, the hope was that it would transform the design and construction of commercial buildings.

But LEED's early bloom is fading. Green building has a robust future, but this certification system may not. LEED is broken.

The program's results thus far have been sorely disappointing. Since 2000, LEED has certified only 285 buildings. By contrast, over the same time period, the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America program helped builders design and erect more than 20,000 new homes, with a minimum 30 percent reduction in energy use for heating, cooling, and hot water at no net cost.

We're concerned that LEED has become expensive, slow, confusing, and unwieldy, a death march for applicants administered by a soviet-style bureaucracy that makes green building more difficult than it needs to be. The result:

  • mediocre "green" buildings where certification, not environmental responsibility, is the primary goal;
  • a few super-high-level eco-structures built by ultra-motivated (and wealthy) owners that stand like the Taj Mahal as beacons of impossibility;
  • an explosion of LEED-accredited architects and engineers chasing lots of money but designing few buildings; and
  • a discouraged cadre of professionals who want to build green, but can't afford to certify their buildings.

An avalanche of reports insist that green building -- and LEED certification in particular -- doesn't cost more than conventional building. These reports are wrong. The second you start a green-building project, it costs more than conventional construction. In the real world, LEED certification typically adds 1 to 5 percent to the budget. The myth that going green costs nothing is damaging to clients who discover the reality deep into the process. Instead of using fuzzy math to show that green building doesn't add costs, let's acknowledge that these buildings cost more and are worth it.

The danger is that LEED certification will cannibalize funds that otherwise could be used to improve a building. Developers face a choice: pursue LEED -- or purchase a photovoltaic system, daylighting, or efficiency upgrades.

Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, which recently built a new facility on the campus of Stanford University, said, "We decided we would rather take money required for LEED certification and spend it on other sustainability features. ... [I]nvesting in LEED certification would have meant that we wouldn't have been able to invest in heat-rejecting windows."

Milwaukee's new Urban Ecology Center is one of the greenest buildings in the upper Midwest. Certified? No, "because it could have added as much as $75,000 to the cost, just for the paperwork," said Ken Leinbach, the center's executive director.

In LEED, you need 26 of 69 possible points to get certified, and all points are weighted equally, even though some have far greater environmental benefits than others.

Point-mongering is what happens when a design team becomes obsessively focused on getting credits, regardless of whether they add environmental value. And "LEED brain" is a term for what happens when the potential PR benefits of certification begin driving the design process. Unfortunately, if you know how to scam LEED points, you can get the PR benefits without doing much at all (other than mountains of paperwork) to make a project green.

A perfect example of LEED brain comes from Boulder, Colo., where a recreation center received one point for installing an electric-vehicle recharging station. Only problem: there are about six electric vehicles in Boulder that could be charged at that site, and the charging station gets used less than once a year.

Said a respondent to a 2004 survey on LEED conducted by the Green Building Alliance, "In a recent building, we received one point for spending an extra $1.3 million for a heat-recovery system that will save about $500,000 in energy costs per year. We also got one point for installing a $395 bicycle rack." While this is an extreme case, it points to a real problem: Why install new HVAC equipment for a few extra points when you could get the same points by changing the color of your shingles at no cost?

One solution would be to make more critical credits mandatory. That way, credit-mongering would be played with the cheap cards like low-VOC paints or sealants, not the face cards like energy and water conservation and sustainably harvested wood.

LEED credit reviews feel like Navy SEAL boot camp, where the goal is to fail as many applicants as possible. The reviews are humorless, severe, even confrontational. Green building is hard, and the USGBC should be aiding and abetting green projects, not crushing them with a faceless technocracy.

"The review process is heavy-handed," noted another respondent to the Green Building Alliance survey. "It's as if the review contractors are trying to impress the USGBC with their thoroughness and nitpicking. ... Review comments are brief and impersonal, without the slightest hint of support."

Credit interpretations should be constructive, not imply that the applicant is a criminal violating parole. Better yet, instead of our FedExing 30 pounds of old-growth to Washington, D.C., then enduring months of electronic quibbling and water torture, why don't the LEED evaluators come out and spend a few days looking at a project themselves? They can personally verify the dual-flush toilets, examine the HVAC controls, meet the design team. If there are questions, they could be resolved on the spot.

The review process needs to be dramatically streamlined, and injected with a serious dose of humility and humanity. USGBC consulting engineers are well-trained and should be given more discretion and some latitude for subjective decision making. Does an application meet the spirit of the credit? If so, allocate the point.

For example, LEED awards one point for providing employees in non-perimeter areas the ability to control temperature, air flow, and lighting. We did one better while working on the Snowmass Golf Clubhouse in Aspen, designing it so that there were no non-perimeter workspaces, thus providing every employee with access to views, daylight, and fresh air. But by eliminating non-perimeter workspaces, we didn't get extra credit; we lost our shot at the credit entirely.

The idea behind LEED is laudable. The execution, so far, has been disappointing. In the final analysis, the world needs green buildings a lot more than green buildings need LEED certification. If LEED continues to cost too much in dollars, time, and effort, we are not going to stop building green projects, we'll just stop certifying them.

We need green building to triumph, to take over our culture like computers did. We need LEED -- or something like it -- to accelerate that transition. Let's roll up our sleeves, get to work, and reinvent LEED -- for our future, for our children, and for our planet.

Auden Schendler is Executive Director of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company. He is the author of Getting Green Done: Hard Truths From the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution (PublicAffairs, 2009).

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  1. rh Posted 10:57 am
    26 Oct 2005

    This is an important commentaryGlad to see this is getting talked about.
    To add another ridiculous instance of point hoarding - I know of a new green building that is attempting LEED certification:
    Item: Buy green power for half the building's usage.
    Cost: ~ $2,500
    LEED Points: 1
    Item: Public Transit (it's an urban location)
    Cost: $0
    LEED Points: 1
    Item: 26 kw solar array and solar hot water that will meet most of the building's needs
    Cost: ~ $500,000
    LEED Points: 0
    What's wrong with this picture?

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  2. supermule Posted 11:21 pm
    26 Oct 2005

    Too blame expensiveI happen to work in the electrical design field and my employer will not allow me to get LEED certification because it is simply too expensive and the people running the show at LEED are making out like bandits (as stated in the article).  One architect I spoke with at work said he agreed that they were making a killing at it but it also points to a problem of how we've been designing buildings all wrong to begin with.  Not to mention that a lot of contractors I speak to on jobsites are sometimes amazed at how much waste is generated on a project and wonder what they can do with it.  Now the only obstacle I see is actually getting the end user of the building (the owner) to buy into a greener building.  That usually is the problem, they don't want to spend the extra cash to do something better (also one of the joys of living in a very "red" state in the south).  I think the tides are turning in favor of green buildings not so much due to LEED but to good 'ol common sense.  Once the people with the money that want the buildings are educated about the benefits of green buildings the ball will start rolling a lot faster.  But how do you educate the typically closed minded and greedy?

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  3. GreenBuilt Posted 7:01 pm
    30 Oct 2005

    Name One Thing that is PERFECT from the Start...Is the LEED Standard perfect?  Of course not!  Nothing is perfect from the start. LEED has only been in existence for 5 years.  It is evolving into an improved standard.  
    Constructive criticism is vital to improving LEED, but I recommend that we all must also focus on the positives.  LEED is the best market transformation tool that I've seen in two decades of green design work.  Over 2100 buildings have commited to it.  This is significant!
    Let's talk specifics - LEED has impact.  I am leading the "greening" effort on a 630,000 SF convention center expansion in the southwest.  We started our greening effort late in the process - at 60% through Construction Documents Phase.  While we are targeting LEED Certified, we may yet earn LEED Silver. The actual environmental impacts are far more important:

    (1) Our plumbing fixture selections will save over 2,100 acre-feet (689 MILLION Gallons) of water EACH YEAR compared to the fixtures that were previously specified.  This would fill over 27,000 average-sized pools annually.

    (2) So far, we have diverted 3,100 tons of construction waste from the landfill - equal in weight to 2,000 Honda Accords.

    (3) Our energy-efficient design measures (energy recovery units that weren't previously specified, more efficient chiller, better lighting and controls, daylighting, etc.), coupled with the solar electricity that will be produced on-site and the energy that will not be needed to pump and treat the saved 2100 acre-feet of water result in 2.2 MILLION kWh of electricity that will NOT be generated by the local utility.  This is equal to the energy consumed by 211 average U.S. households EVERY YEAR.

    (4) The saved energy means that 3.2 MILLION pounds of CO2 WILL NOT be emitted into the atmosphere at fossil fuel power plants EACH YEAR.
    LEED served as the blueprint for the Owner and the Design Team to drive these results late in the design for a 2% increase in budget.  
    Is LEED perfect?  No - but it works! Get involved.  Use it and improve it, because we ARE making an impact - and that is the most valuable LEED point yet.

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  4. crazypat Posted 11:27 am
    21 Nov 2005

    Yes it is, and here's an example...Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA
    My college has recently thrown up two new concrete monstrosities, and somehow both are LEED certified. I was extremely perturbed by the school's thoughtlessness and the lack of student input. These are two high-energy, high-water consumption buildings--one a dining hall, the other an 80-person dorm. Neither addressed the fundamental design considerations of a "green building" and instead opted for the credit-mongering approach.

    Key items that were given lip-service only



    passive heating/cooling design

    grey water recycling

    solar photovoltaics

    construction materials


    I pushed hard for grey water systems and PV in both buildings, as these are essential and obvious systems in the always-sunny desert of southern California. Neither was not implemented because they "cost too much", a very short-sighted viewpoint that fails to consider the true costs of current water and energy supplies.
    Here's an excerpt from the college's website boasting of the LEED certification items:



     More than 75 percent of the construction waste was diverted away from landfills.

    More than 50 percent of the building materials were manufactured less then 500 miles from campus.

    More than 10 percent of the building materials is from recycled content.

    Most of the site's storm water is infiltrated into the landscape and not sent into city storm drains.

    Water-efficient drip irrigation systems reduce landscape water use by more than 50 percent compared to standard practice.

    Energy-efficient systems reduce the building's energy use by more than 18 percent compared to standard practice.

    The wood ceiling in the lounge comes from a certified sustainably managed forest.

    A white "cool roof" helps to minimize the urban heat island effect.



    [ read at http://www.hmc.edu/headline/leed.html ]
    A short rebuttal (as I have spent time in this new building):



    Considering that both buildings are 90% (by mass) cinderblock and steel girders, the 10% recycled construction material is pathetic.

    The "energy-efficient systems" ignored the whole-systems design approach in favor of the "light-bulb here, light-bulb-there" approach.

    The building uses a lot more wood (including bed frames, desks, and chairs) than contained "in the ceiling of the lounge".

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  5. Sundancer Posted 3:15 pm
    21 Feb 2007

    Green BuildingAs chairman of the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association Green Building Committee, I am very active in bringing about a shift in awareness here in New Mexico regarding green building, energy efficiency and expanding consciousness in how we relate to the planet. We are working hand in hand with our legislature for tax incentives that will make green building more affordable. The Build Green New Mexico program, which we are attempting to make available statewide, will be rewarded, in terms of tax incentives, the same as the more expensive and cumbersome Leeds-H program. Comments and support welcome......

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  6. shriek Posted 12:12 pm
    02 Apr 2007

    LEEDS AwarenessI came to this site by seaching for more info on LEEDS. Thank you for opening my eyes to the pitfalls of the certification process.

    I agree the focus should be on the end product being more efficient and sustainable, but the LEEDS certification is a powerful marketing tool and some businesses will always corrupt this for their own gain.

    It seems the key is getting the information I've read here out to the media. Make people aware of the skewed point system. I wasn't aware of the lame process of awarding the same amount of points for vastly different components of a project. I trust consumers will want to know more. Since LEEDS is the only certification available, either they simply need to change the awarding of points to a more balanced system, based on environment value, or someone else should start a certification process. Obviously the first option would be desirable. USGBC has done so much in so little time, it would be a huge setback to start over.

    I say, "tweak it".

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  7. acon Posted 2:56 am
    16 Jun 2007

    LEEDSFinally a LEEDS article that express truths I'm a general contractor in AR, this last year 2006-07 I was involved in two Leeds project. It was my first two and extremely amazing. My first project I was only a subcontractor I did the concrete work for an addition to a county building, i.e. drilled piers, spread footings, stem walls etc. what a dose of reality. When the LEEDS consultant gave the speech to the subs of how good and how much energy the building would save every sub was amazed at the stupidity of his assertions he might have been able to fool the county that was paying this enormous fee for compiling a rain forest worth of paper work, but he sure didn't fool any of the construction worker, I watched the other trades there supervision, his LEEDS inspection. Being a general contractor I new more then most and understood more then most. I seen the duct work set on the ground exposed to the dust, but when it was up the consultant takes pictures of the duct work with covering over the end showing proving that the job was protecting the duct work from contaminates, when in reality it was holding the contaminated duct in. all through out the building has duct work were I wrote in the dust "Commission this" it always got a laugh from the construction workers, when I told the architect about this he said that's why they have the two week blow out period. I confronted him and said you don't clean much house do you? The explained how the dust will be there forever the galvanized duct has a greasy residue and these sarcastic "commission this" written in the dust will be there forever. How about water proofing a concrete with no seems and crakes just to get a point, I asked the construction manager why are you water proofing I installed water stop at the bottom? First he said he thought it needed it, I explained concrete is water proof or septic tank people would be out of business I built a good wall no cracks no seems it would not have leaked. I finally got him to admit they were after that point! And the stupidity goes own and own and that's just the first job. Did not mention the consultant's comments when he was praising Leeds he said studies show xx % savings. I said STUDYS how did the studies? He said they were independent studies and right, I snapped back INDEPENDANT no body paid them? Turns out he was reading of the LEEDS web sight. Then I go be a general on a new building oh how stupid, the list could go on for days, two outside lights switched by electric eye and an astronomical time clock was added because they were worried about there point, so for 1500 dollars they have a switched light, or how about a day light sensor that's supposed to cut of the hall lights when the sun gets bright but it never gets bright enough because of the translucent panels installed instead of glass, they got a point for that. I asked the architect about the land scrapping and said what about the a sprinkler system he proudly said we got a point for picking plants that don't need water, I said WHAT are you from New York City? All plants need water. Would be so bad but 25' away in an existing building they have a pee trough that drips water 24/7 water the plants would toughly love. Chain of custody wood? How ridicules it comes from Prescott AR is shipped to Texas to be treated and I have to by it from a Leeds acceptable person from Chicago, cost 25% more then what I could have got from 1 mile away and seen before I bought this was bought and paid for before I could get. To top it off when cut its treated about a 1/4 inch deep the inside never got a drop. That vendor just had full intentions of screwing anyone that called cause he new the paper work was needed. Oh and the list could go on there's a story behind every point they attempted. I never was a single person worried about the planet they were only worried about their points! The first architect had done several Leeds job they made a killing both Leeds consultants did less work then the architect and the contractor and made buckets of money. It was the first LEEDS for the second architect he was excited at first and convinced LEEDS was the wave of the future he has since changed his mind. One day we were talking I told him this is BS I only put 2000.00 in here for this Leeds paper work and I'm going to over spend that then he said "you put money in for it? I wished I would have" to sum it up there ripping off the taxpayer. The professionals are not going to say anything because they are making good money for little work they don't care if its stupid work, they don't care what it cost, they don't care if its going to save the earth. OH and another thing blow out period were the VOCs are gone before they move in? That's BS are they saying that an office workers life is more important then a construction workers we breath the VOC, oh yes I no some one will say your supposed to have a mask? Would be more cost effective to have the office workers were a mask for two weeks then have the ac run wide open at 66 degrees for two weeks both ideals are a joke.

    As a professional, well-respected contractor LEEDS is a government sanctioned lie with facts being manipulated to benefit the certain few

    It is broken, as long as they're trying to get points instead of trying to do the right thing it will stay broken. How can it be so stupid is there no leadership, maybe an old FEMA person is running it. What happen to just doing the right thing. Oh yea the beginning of the article it said something about the only person that use to be green were some bead wearing hippies. I didn't have beads but I was worried about the earth long before LEEDS was ever dreamed of.

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  8. iprefertherain Posted 7:18 am
    07 Sep 2007

    The PollI think the poll question "Is LEED broken?" is a biased question.
    The question should be "Is LEED sustainable?" That awful agency speak confuses the issue. Most of the article is in the context of that too.
    By focusing the entire poll around "will it be fixed" rather than "will it ever promote truly sustainable buildings" you're already encouraged responses regarding whether or not LEED will succeed and have a succesful public image, rather than whether or not it is actually sustainable.
    If the organization doesn't certify truly sustainable buildings, then I really think the article title says it well, its "LEEDing us astray".

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  9. benchkid Posted 4:30 am
    25 Jan 2008

    LEED - NOT LEEDSFor someone with casual interest, or who is new to the topic, I can understand this misnomer (though I have no clue where it comes from - the UK city perhaps?). If, however, one wishes to have credibility in this industry it would advisable to call the system by its proper name.  I realize this is pure semantics, but to professionals in the green building world it conveys the image that you have no idea what you're talking about - especially if you're a Chairman of the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association Green Building Committee.
    I apologize for any unnecessary bluntness.

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  10. dgambard Posted 4:50 am
    08 May 2008

    Leed suxAmen...Somewhere along the line the USGBC realized it could make mounds of cash off of the Green Building Movement by charging outrageous fees for commissioning or even to become LEED certified yourself. The dang test is $400 dollars just to become a LEED AP. If you failed yup...you guessed it shell out another $400 dollars. Its more expensive to take this test than to take the PE to become an engineer. If they really were concerned about making buildings green they would make it affordable. Unfortunately they are laughing all the way to the bank. On top of this they are making it another "elite" profession just like architects have with their own profession. Why is it I can get a 4 year degree in engineering and become a PE and yet to become an architect you have to have a masters degree. The sad thing is that I know more as an engineer about building than any architect with their elitist masters degree. Oh...and I also have more common sense.

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  11. JonahK Posted 11:15 pm
    08 May 2008

    To LEED SuxEven though dgambard that wrote "LEED Sux" has such an inflated opinion of himself, combined with his apparent anger issues related to having selected the wrong career, I have to agree with him that LEED is less about true sustainability.  LEED is just another program designed to benefit one group over another.  It's big advantage is the manipulation of the whole kool-aid drinking, far-left, program-loving, spend other people's money, fanatics that have no concern for facts or reality as long as their self-righteous cause is advanced.
    As for dgambard, I am an architect. I consider the engineers I work with as my professional partners in the design and construction industry.  I don't have a Masters.  I opted for the undergraduate plus 1 year program that is still offered in many states.  Your unsubstantiated claim that you know so much more is the real "sad thing" here.  My expereince has been that the engineers I work with are all extremely good at what they do, but they tend to be myopic.  I see where electrical engineers locate light fixtures on top of the hvac grilles, or worse inside of a steel beam.  They carefully and competently lay-out their own part of the project, but often fail to coordinate their work with the other designers.  I can't count the number of times an engineer has called me with a deisgn question and my response is to direct them to a specific page and detail that we have already provided them that fully answers his or her question.  If only some engineers would spend a few minutes and try to understand the big picture it would benefit us all.

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