Green Building in Massachusetts - LEED Certification
Posted by Matt Beaton on Mon, May 24, 2010 @ 02:25 PM
This week, there have been some interesting opinions expressed regarding LEED certifications for commercial, residential construction - and even for entire neighborhoods! In an Article posted at Inhabitat.com, they ask if, "the LEED system [is] dropping the ball on energy efficiency?"
One change incorporated into the new LEED Version 3.0 is that buildings need to report annual energy use compared with designed energy use. According to a USGBC study, approximately half of all LEED certified buildings would not make Energy Star.
In a related story on worldchanging.com, Richard Conniff discussed building commissioning (and re-commissioning). Building commissioning refers to monitoring the efficiency of a building from design through initial operation. He pointed to specific examples of LEED-certified buildings with common problems like stuck HVAC dampers and other examples of simple fixes with less than 1-year paybacks.
Richard concluded that re-commissioning / energy auditing of older homes and buildings actually had typical payback of 1.1 years on average compared with 4.5 years for new buildings!
Another story on worldchanging.com discussed retrofitting entire neighborhoods to meet LEED's Neighborhood Development standard. In the UK, a Green Streets competition performed an energy audit on each house in eight streets and provided cash to each street to obtain the best increase in energy efficiency. The street with the best performance received a cash award. The next challenge is providing a big increase in funding.
Finally, here's a neat example of an affordable housing project in New Mexico designed and built to obtain LEED Platinum certification.