Can LEED Survive the Coming Carbon Neutral Age?

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LEED has yet to embrace the carbon-neutral goal, which may be harder to achieve than Peterson makes it sound. Some high-profile green buildings save far less energy than advertised, a fact he acknowledged. The problem is that few designers, builders, and owners bother to make sure that what has been designed, whether green or not, is built properly and works well — an open secret in the industry that now tarnishes LEED and other green efforts. “We need to bridge the gap between design and performance,” Peterson said.

Peterson sees potential in another idea, but one that could blunt the impact of LEED: an energy-rating system for buildings. An initiative already rolling out in the European Union requires that every building publish its energy performance. Selkowitz likes the idea. “No one has a clue what the energy performance of current buildings is. Once you know that A is much worse than B, you’ll start to look at why that is.”

Public recognition of climate change emboldens even more ambitious efforts. The Living Building Challenge seeks ‘to define the highest measure of sustainability possible in the built environment.” It ashcans LEED’s credits, instead setting out numerous prerequisites like meeting 100 percent of a building&rsquo's energy, water, and water-disposal needs on-site, and purchasing credits to offset the structure’s carbon footprint. (USGBC has endorsed the effort, which was devised by the Cascadia Green Building Council in the Pacific Northwest.) Aspen, Colo. now requires new buildings to be completely carbon neutral, according to the Aspen Ski Company’s Schendler.

Turning the tide on global warming is not the only issue that may drive greater complexity and cost into LEED. USGBC is working on a lifecycle-cost-analysis methodology so that designers can make choices with staying power. But past attempts at such analysis have proven famously difficult to implement.

Advocates talk of sleepless nights as they consider these enormous challenges. If LEED moves too far ahead of public consensus or building-industry capacity, it will lose the widespread support it now enjoys. But move too slowly and it flirts with irrelevancy as urgent issues take center stage. “Water management is looming as a crisis right behind carbon,” explains architect Kieran. “Materials management is intimately related to carbon production. Let’s not lessen the broad focus of LEED, but enhance the overall value of carbon-emissions reduction. Global warming is the more immediate tragic question looming over us,” he adds, “but I would be dismayed if we put all the eggs in one basket.

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