LEED V4

The Story of LEED: Part 3*

The latest version of LEED, LEED v4, launched in November 2013, continues the momentum in green building by increasing LEED’s technical rigor and facilitating its expansion into new market sectors, including data centers, warehouses and distribution centers, hospitality, and midrise residential structures. LEED v4 also brings an additional focus on user experience, with significant efforts put toward streamlining the LEED documentation process and developing helpful tools for project teams in LEED Online.

LEED v4 includes an entirely new section that awards points to project teams that use products and materials for which life-cycle information is available and that have environmentally, economically and socially preferable life-cycle impacts. The new credit also rewards LEED project teams for selecting products that are verified to minimize the use and generation of harmful substances. The LEED v4 approach paints a more complete picture of materials and products, enabling more informed decisions that have a greater overall benefit to the environment, human health and communities.

LEED v4’s renewed focus on material ingredient reporting and the use of sustainably harvested wood has also made USGBC and LEED the subject of new attacks from the chemical industry as well as the timber industry, which had previously come to a head in 2010 when USGBC members voted against including Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) standards in the LEED rating system (USGBC did not deem SFI rigorous enough for sustainable wood). In both cases, these entities are intent on preserving the status quo and are threatened by LEED’s recognition of environmentally friendly, healthy green building products. These groups have utilized a variety of tactics to undermine LEED, such as developing their own rating system, creating front groups and working to eliminate the use of LEED by federal and state entities.

*Full article here...and you you can also read Part 1: From a Simple Idea to a Several-Hundred-Billion-Dollar Industry and Part 2: A Green Building Explosion (2003-2009).

Category: LEED v4

Source: USGBC, http://www.usgbc.org/articles/part-3-challenges-and-opportunities-2010-present

Author: Jacob Kriss

Date of Publication: March 6, 2014