Environmental Sustainability, Green Buildings and LEED Join Forces at Greenbuild 2006

The recently concluded Greenbuild 2006 conference in Denver showcased the growing confluence of sustainability and environmental concerns, green buildings and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating systems.

The recently concluded Greenbuild 2006 conference in Denver showcased the growing confluence of sustainability and environmental concerns, green buildings and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating systems. The USGBC announced that it would sent to its members in January, for a vote, a proposal to amend the LEED for New Construction (LEED-NC) version 2.2 rating system to require that each project achieve at least two of the “Energy and Atmosphere” points, resulting in a minimum of 14% energy savings against the prevailing ASHRAE 90.1-2004 standard. (At the present, no specific energy savings are required to become a LEED-certified project, just meeting the minimum ASHRAE standard). Green building and environmental consultants have been using the LEED rating system in increasing numbers, with more than 1,000 LEED-NC projects registered for the first time in 2005. This proposal would be a first response to the challenge posed to USGBC in October by Architecture 2030, a new nonprofit calling for a 60% reduction in building energy use by 2010 (versus the average in 2005). Because USGBC made a public and overwhelming commitment at Greenbuild to reducing the global “carbon footprint” of new (and existing) buildings as its first priority, look for this to be the first of many changes in the LEED rating system that will be required to assure meeting that commitment in the future.

Posted by on 11/24/2006 at 01:30 PM

Several people out in the blogosphere have commented about the carbon emissions from Greenbuild itself. When more than 13,000 people get together from all over the world - that’s a lot of carbon emissions. And what about the convention center itself. The air conditioning was blasting away. How can we reduce our “carbon footprint” for future Greenbuilds?

Posted by lindaloo  on  11/24/2006  at  02:27 PM

Actually according to USGBC, two organizations have already agreed to buy “carbon offsets” to cover double the estimated emissions the Conference travel and operations. What I would really like to see is enough green building and new LEED actions from such a conference to generate 10 times or 100 times the emissions with new actions. That would be a positive first step toward real sustainability, environmental sanity.

Posted by Jerry Yudelson  on  11/24/2006  at  03:14 PM