LEED

[kurt]

I still wouldn't be inclined to pay for the 3rd party certifier; I'd want to put the money into the house.

I think 3rd party is best. Why let the fox "verify" the hen house so to speak?

And besides, it's another potential income stream for us independent inspecting units. I'm not interested in LEED, though. Other stuff catches my fancy. . .

Local example of LEED skullduggery that yanks my crank: our local town financed and constructed it's own City hall that was completed about 2 years ago. They are proud it has some sort of LEED designation. Cost way too much money. Bought out some business, tore them down, built the new city hall.

Meanwhile, gobs of building and real estate sat vacant around the town waiting to be had. True sustainability and use of existing resources would have been to purchase one of those buildings/parcels and renovate those. Would have cost 1/2 to 1/3 the price in my view.

But folks are glad the new over-priced City hall is LEED something or other. And it's shiny and cool.

Yep, there's lots of stupid stuff with LEED. The most green thing one can do is take an existing dump and turn it around; LEED can be complicated in the rehab process, though.

I'm not into the 3rd party thing simply because it's money that could go into the house, and if my architect was on the case, that'd be ok for me.

Of course, the 3rd party is to prevent contamination of the purity of the program, or something.....there'd be developers that would cheat because that's what lots of development is.......fantasy wrapped around a turd.

The class was nowhere near as boring as that video; it was a relatively fast paced blast of explanation and applied activity.

[SNations]

The phrase "missing the forest for the trees" comes to mind, but I think in this case the reverse is true - I think that you all are missing the trees for the forest. You've been so greenwashed and you are so enamored of environmental programs that you are not stopping to examine the details of the LEED program. LEED is like my kids' third grade soccer teams: everybody is allowed to win and get a trophy, regardless of how good they really are. I'll let you decide if you think this is good for kids, but it's not good for buildings and the environmental movement in general to give out phony awards.

Firstly, I don't see how you can possibly look at the Seattle City Hall and the Youngstown Federal Building and conclude that these buildings are in any way "green". Whatever else they may have going for them, their excessive energy use will go on and on for decades to come. That's not green. And these are only two examples, and they are not isolated. The LEED program is full of this type of building. You can argue that these buildings are green. I disagree strongly. You can argue that these buildings are aberrations in the LEED program. Again I disagree. But somehow you've got to get past examples like this, or the whole LEED program just collapses.

The problem with LEED is that the tradeoffs it allows are false equivalencies, allowing builders to choose one idea over another, even though the environmental impact of those choices is not equal. Not even close. Someone mentioned that LEED helps to nudge builders towards worthy goals. But a nudge only helps when you are being nudged away from something that is bad, or at least towards something better. Nudging a builder towards using bamboo floors is not helpful when that nudges him away from greater energy efficiency. The scoring system allows builders to game the system and achieve certifications that are not deserved. Any type of wood flooring is a renewable resource. No fossil fuel is.

There is a reason that every new iteration of the LEED program values energy efficiency higher than the previous version: they know that they miscalculated terribly when the program was first set up. And now they're trying to make up for lost time. Eventually they'll have a program that is 95 per cent energy driven and everything else will be an afterthought. Good. But then LEED will be essentially no different from any of the other energy programs.

Even the folks at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com acknowledge the role energy plays in a green building. From their primer on green building: "But choosing appropriate materials is a lost effort if the house itself wastes fuel or is poorly designed and haphazardly built. Green products are becoming more plentiful all the time, and given the right context they are an important part of sustainability. It's the context part we shouldn't forget about." Too many LEED certified buildings waste fuel, and so everything else is a "lost effort". By allowing tradeoffs that are false equivalencies LEED completely misses on the context part.

If LEED wants to be relevant, indeed if it wants to survive, it should stop offering only one certification per building, which is meaningless because of the tradeoffs of false equivalencies. It should offer several different certifications. For example, a building could be certified LEED for Energy, LEED for Landscaping, LEED for Materials and Resources, LEED for Water Efficiency. In this way the certifications will mean something, because the tradeoffs within each area of emphasis are not so bogus. This will really nudge builders to do the best they can within each area of emphasis rather than allowing them to make phony tradeoffs.

[kurt]

What are you trying to say?

[Steven Hockstein]

I think he means that LEED certification has become a confusing, complicated, and flawed process that needs to be simplified with the goal of creating energy efficient and enivromentally responsible buildings that include a logical system to gauge their success.

[kurt]

I agree with that.

I was never championing LEED as a model for smart building. I was introduced to an in-depth program explaining how it works, and saw some benefits for those not inclined to technicalities, i.e., 100% of my clientele.

The sooner it goes away, the better, and hopefully it will be supplanted by a better model driven by thoughtful design.