By Mathew Spieler
WASHINGTON—This year marks the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the eighth year since launching its widely successful Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. Despite the program’s success there have been some controversies along the way, plus new scientific findings and general understandings about the environment and building in general have come out. New technologies have come on stream as well.

Recognizing these, USGBC is now in the middle of a public comment period that runs through June 22 (5 p.m. Pacific), on proposed changes to its rating system. Dubbed “the next evolution” of the rating system, LEED 2009 “represents a reorganization of the existing LEED rating systems for commercial buildings, combined with a series of major technical advancements…,” noted the organization’s LEED Steering Committee which heads up the technical development of the LEED rating system.

Scot Horst, chairman of the steering committee, explained that LEED 2009 is not a “tear down and rebuild” of the LEED that exists in the market but rather a reorganization of the existing rating systems along with several key advancements.

LEED 2009 is the sum of several parts: LEED prerequisite/credit alignment and harmonization; predictable development cycle; transparent environmental/human impact credit weighting, and regionalization.

“When it was introduced in 2000, the LEED rating system helped to spark a revolution that is changing the way we build and operate our offices, schools, hospitals and homes,” said Rick Fedrizzi, USGBC’s president, CEO and founding chair. “LEED 2009 resets the bar for green building leadership because the urgency of our mission has challenged the industry to move faster and reach further.”

Continuing to seek the right balance between technical advancement and market transformation was a driving force behind the LEED 2009 work, Horst explained. “The ‘big ideas’ we’ve proposed include transparent weightings of LEED credits so the highest-priority credits achieve the most points, a new mechanism for incorporating bioregional credits and a more nimble framework that supports rapid response to emerging environmental and human health issues.”

While LEED 2009 is the result “of thousands of hours of volunteer time” USGBC realized that much has been invested in the current LEED system and, as a direct result, a concerted effort was made to ensure LEED 2009 capitalizes on the existing market momentum. “Consequently,” Horst said, “the steering committee has created a structure that will be familiar to those versed in the current LEED rating systems. Most of the structural and technical changes incorporated into LEED 2009 were designed to create a rating system that can be part of a continuous improvement cycle.”

This concept of harmonizing and streamlining the LEED process should not come as a surprise to anyone in the flooring industry. Back in January, FCNews was the first to report USGBC was working on a major process this year called ‘bookshelving in order to harmonize and align all the credits’ of the various rating systems (Jan. 28/Feb. 4).

In fact, Michelle Moore, a senior vice president at USGBC, said, the initiative “allows USGBC to better update the ratings as new technologies, products and services are developed. Our goal is to update the LEED credits every year so that we can stay on top of new technology and maintain a healthy debate.”

Industry reaction

While industry executives and their technical managers were still in the process of reviewing the proposed changes in the LEED system at press time, the overall reaction from those FCNews spoke with was generally favorable, with many noting this is something that has been in the works for a while and that some of the changes they see were expected.

John Bradshaw, environmental marketing manager for Shaw, noted, “The LEED 2009 program helps to create a consistent program across all LEED formats which is a benefit to everyone. With a program as complex as LEED, the fact the organization is working to add clarity and consistency is very positive.”

Dave Kitts, Mannington’s vice president-environment, added, these changes have been “brewing for awhile now. LEED has became amazingly successful, but has inherent issues. For awhile now USGBC has been talking about wanting to get away from distinct LEED systems and create more of a book shelf of good LEED credits that building design teams can choose based on the circumstances of the particular building versus being constrained within broad LEED parameters. It also wanted to make LEED more regional—not so ‘national’ based on the reality that a building in northern Maine is very different from one in Arizona. Lastly, it wants to evolve past multiple single attribute credits to a system that is more life cycle based. All are notable and appropriate—but the devil is always in the detail.”

Bill Gregory, Milliken’s director of sustainable strategies, added, there are positives from what he’s read, such as the harmonization to help end confusion and the regionalization concept. But, he feels the proposal lacks in one major area. “It puts too much emphasis on new construction and not on existing buildings. I feel USGBC is missing a huge opportunity with LEED EB (existing buildings), which has 10 to 15 times the impact as new construction. We’re renovating more buildings than building new ones so this is where the standards should be focused. How do we bring the existing portfolio of structures up to sustainable standards?”

Bradshaw added, “We feel the 2009 program is a natural progression as USGBC works to align the different LEED formats, but we think all USGBC members want to see changes that are supported by good science. If the carpet industry and others are able to convince the LEED For Homes Committee that the latest science makes a case for changing the current treatment of carpet, then the 2009 program changes may eventually communicate that rationale across all LEED rating systems.”

Larger initiative

Interestingly, LEED 2009 is actually one part of a multifaceted initiative to streamline and create capacity for LEED project execution, documentation and certification. This initiative is referred to as LEED Version 3 (LEED v3) and is made up of three key pieces: LEED 2009 updates/revisions, revision and evolution of the LEED certification process, and LEED Online v3.

Detailed information about specific proposed technical changes to the rating system can be found in the number of background documents that accompany the public comment forms on USGBC’s Web site, www.usgbc.org.

(Editor’s note: FCNews will stay on top of this important initiative and update readers as new developments occur.)