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Advertising supplement provided by Owens Corning

One of the first things USGBC did to promote green and sustainable buildings was develop a comprehensive set of green programs and rating tools under the umbrella title Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). There are several LEED rating tools focusing on different segments of the building market (residential, commercial, interior design and existing buildings), but LEED for New Construction and Major Renovations (LEED-NC) is the only tool presently offered by the USGBC and in widespread use. Other LEED rating tools are in draft or pilot form.

It is important to note before proceeding that LEED does not “certify” products and LEED does not require product “certification” information for product or material submittal verification. It is also important to understand that LEED does not single out one particular product type when assessing points within each environmental category. Instead, LEED rating tools consider the overall impact of all materials used. In short, LEED is a tool for rating the overall energy performance of a project, not a product.

LEED is a voluntary, consensus-based, market-driven building rating system that is based on accepted energy and environmental principles and strikes a balance between established practices and emerging concepts. It evaluates environmental performance from a whole-building perspective, providing a standard for what constitutes a “green building.”

There are four ranking levels of LEED certification.

 

Certification Levels Points Leed Certified 26-32 Silver 33-38 Gold 39-51 Platinum 52+

Within LEED there are six categories where various points can be attained for aspects of the building project:

• Sustainable Sites
• Water Efficiency
• Energy & Atmosphere
• Materials & Resources
• Indoor Environmental Quality
• Innovation & Design Process

Within each category are individual point credits and some categories and/or individual point credits have prerequisite requirements that must be met before points can be earned for the specific category or individual credit.

It is not necessary to accumulate points in every item under each category in order to amass sufficient total points to meet one of the ranking levels of LEED certification. Many of the individual point categories within LEED are structured such that a given point is based on the dollars expended in the project for each material and weight-averaged across the aggregate of all materials. So what is important is that when taken together the aggregate meets the individual point criteria within LEED. Within this structure the project team has the freedom to choose materials that have strong performance qualities and are low cost and available to meet different uses — not just products with high environmental attributes.