"Despite its high visibility and sometimes grandiose claims, LEED's impact on building energy efficiency has been modest to date. If LEED is to fulfill its potential to steadily push the leading edge of "green building" practice, public policymakers will need not only to continue to support that effort, but to act assertively to pull along the trailing edge of "brown building" practice as well. The voluntary model that LEED represents is inevitably bumping up against its limits,"

says David M. Hart in an MIT-IPC Energy Innovation Working Paper in March, 2009.

Too big to fail?

Since its inception in 1998, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) family of rating systems for buildings and its parent organization, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), have grown at an extraordinary rate.

The professional certification system and building, community and retrofit certification system is not merely preeminent among environmentally-inclined property developers and owners, having "no major competitor" in this niche; its advocates claim that it has become a "de facto standard" for new class A office space in the U.S.

"The business case [for LEED] is so strong," according to the president of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), that "you would be foolish to ignore it."

LEED certification is taken by many casual observers to be synonymous with energy efficiency.

After all, the first "E" in the LEED acronym stands for "energy."

A recent study, however,  by the New Buildings Institute found that comparable buildings that had received the same LEED rating used vastly different amounts of energy. Some LEED-certified buildings used more energy than permitted by code, which is supposed to define "the worst possible building you're allowed to build."

LEED's flexibility permits builders to define and fulfill their responsibilities in many ways, reflecting the diversity of environmental demands put upon them across the country and the specific opportunities available in any given project.

The advantages of flexibility have to be balanced with the limitations.

LEED is a much bigger program than it would have been if it had used a rigid checklist instead of a menu of alternatives.

Awareness of "green building" is much broader, too, penetrating the mainstream of the industry and even public consciousness to an unprecedented degree.

But these achievements, impressive as they are, hardly mean that the U.S. building industry is destined for a high-efficiency future, as is required to stave off climate change.

LEED's success depended on collaborators and allies, and its future impact on energy efficiency will also depend on what other actors do. Chief among these other actors are governments at all three levels - federal, state, and local.

LEED is widely perceived to be (as Thomas Friedman puts it) a "perfect example of an energy/environment standard that did not come from government down, but from society up."

Yet government agencies, in their roles as buyers and owners of buildings, as land use and taxing authorities, and as regulators of construction, undoubtedly helped to catalyze LEED's explosive growth in the past decade.

While USGBC may well have been "the right idea at the right time,"  its leaders skillfully seized both political and business opportunities. The paper returns in the later sections to the role of LEED in future efforts to improve building energy efficiency, which may be perceived with greater clarity once its past and present are better understood.

The research paper cited in this article (Don't Worry About the Government? The LEED-NC "Green Building" Rating System and Energy Efficiency in U.S. Commercial Buildings, by David M. Hart ) describes the history, development, and current operation of USGBC and LEED, particularly with regard to energy efficiency in commercial buildings, the subsector in which LEED has had its greatest impact.

The narrative situates "green building" in a political as well as a business context.

LEED's Market Perspective

From the market perspective, USGBC seems to have set the balance effectively.

• As of December 2008, approximately 17,500 commercial projects had registered with LEED (all programs) and over 2100 had been certified.
• The growth rate is accelerating, to the point that (according to a November 2007 report by Deutsche Bank's real estate investment arm) "green building is fundamentally altering real estate market dynamics."
• Ernst and Young's Real Estate Market Outlook 2007 similarly opines that "green is no longer a luxury."
• The Costar Group recent year-end round-up put it this way: "2008 was the year when green building became inevitable."

These analyses equate "green" with LEED.

Large Private Institutions' Roles in LEED-Dominance

Large private institutions made up a second group of early adopters.

The non-profit sector, composed mainly of private universities and schools, made up an additional 21% of LEED-NC registrations through the end of 2005.

LEED-NC quickly gained traction as well among firms and other organizations that wanted to project an image of environmental responsibility, especially when constructing a new headquarters or other high-profile building.

These early adopters were typically owner-operators, who stood to reap any long-term cost savings or price appreciation (as well as goodwill) that LEED certification might bring.

Speculative builders, who account for a large portion of commercial construction in the U.S., take a shorter-term view than owner-occupants. They typically seek to minimize construction costs in order to keep prices competitive and profits up. Their interest in LEED took off about three or four years ago, as a result of several convergent factors.

• USGBC developed new programs, LEED for Core and Shell (LEED-CS) and LEED for Commercial Interiors (LEEDCI), that targeted speculative builders.
  
• The cost differential between construction of LEEDcertified and construction of non-LEED-certified buildings declined, too, as "green building" practices and materials were routinized in LEED's early years.
• Some perceived a broader change in public priorities and the preferences of buyers and lessees, associated to some degree with the movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
• Energy prices soared, helping to extend LEED's appeal well beyond the "true believers."
  

Politicians have been trying to "out-green" each another.

One of the first adopters of LEED-NC was the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which manages much of the federal government's real estate portfolio.

The federal government is the nation's largest real estate owner and lessee.

Attracted by the system's flexibility and required by executive order to "green" government buildings, GSA adopted a policy of LEED certification for new construction and leasing in January 2000. Several Federal agencies outside of GSA's purview, notably the U.S. Navy, which was the first federal agency to win a LEED certification, enacted similar policies. State and local governments were also in the vanguard of LEED-NC adoption. Seattle, for instance, was the first city to enact a LEED mandate for municipal buildings, requiring Silver certification in 2001.

41% of all LEED-NC registrations through the end of 2005
were government buildings.

But the business case for LEED has not yet been made.

The challenge is similar to that for building energy performance; the database remains too small to draw definitive conclusions, rhetoric notwithstanding.

A March 2008 study by the CoStar Group touting the enhanced financial value of LEED buildings, which was promoted by USGBC and reported widely in the trade press, for instance, faced a withering critique from the executive director of the Green Building Finance Consortium, because it used small samples and inappropriate reference groups.

An April 2008 study released by the Program on Housing and Urban Policy at University of California, Berkeley, by contrast, found that LEED buildings did not command higher rents.

The Berkeley study did find that Energy Star-labeled buildings, which have an energy performance in the 75th percentile or better of comparable buildings, earned higher rents.

This finding suggests that, if the ratcheting up of LEED-NC's energy efficiency elements leads to more consistent energy performance improvements, LEED buildings might also earn higher rents.

Energy Efficiency Business Case

An effective link between LEED-NC and LEED-EB (which incorporates Energy Star by reference), similarly, could enhance the business case by improving transparency for prospective buyers about energy performance and thus anticipated operating costs.

On the other hand, if energy prices continue to slide, the savings associated with energy efficiency may affect real estate values less in the future than they have in the recent past.

In a typical home, 43% of the utility bill goes toward heating and cooling. 

Homeowners  want ready access to a variety of building methods that can make their homes more weather resistant and energy efficient.

Energy, Weatherization and Technology can incorporate energy efficiency into rebuilding technology options by educating contractors and homeowners on how best to repair or rebuild damaged homes in a more flood and wind-resistant manner.

These aren't usually cosmetic solutions.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Technical Assistance Project includes information and technical specifications that include renewable and energy-efficient technology suggestions for reconstruction.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has tested many high-performance building materials and provides municipalities and states with training materials and information on incorporating energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies into the rebuilding or repairing of flood- and wind-damaged homes.

Many local governments incorporates the energy efficiency and renewable energy technology materials into workshops and training materials for contractors and homeowners.

Some of the high performance technologies that are being tested and developed are found on the Department of Energy's division websites such as:

ORNL - Oak Ridge National Laboratory

DOE EERE  Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy

Seasonal Energy Savings for Consumers  

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Physical and Life Sciences

Much of Livermore's research is at the molecular level and reaches into the depths of space, but some research is also directed to the natural spaces around us.  For instance,


Through research funded by the California Energy Commission, scientists from the Laboratory, the University of California at Merced, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research found that temperatures in California from 1915 to 2000 have increased by 1.16°C (2.1°F) statewide.

The research, which appeared in the March 2008, Supplement 1 edition of Climatic Change--dedicated to California's climate--also suggests that the warming may be related to human activities.

The team used data from nine sets of observational records and from a suite of climate model simulations of natural internal climate variability to analyze trends in California-average temperatures during the periods 1950-1999 and 1915-2000.

The researchers found large increases in mean and maximum daily temperatures in late winter and early spring, as well as increases in minimum daily temperatures from January to September. These trends are inconsistent with model-based estimates of natural internal climate variability, and thus require one or more external forcing agents to be explained. The researchers suggest that the warming of Californian winters over the twentieth century is associated with human-induced changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation.

Recent climate models have not been effective in explaining California's summertime trend, where warming mainly occurs at night.

Based on their previous research, the team suggests that lack of a detectable increase in summertime maximum temperature arises from a cooling associated with large-scale irrigation, which may have counteracted warming from mounting greenhouse gases and urbanization.

If this hypothesis is verified, the acceleration of carbon dioxide emissions combined with a leveling of irrigation may result in a rapid summertime warming in the Central Valley in the future.

SO... more energy-efficient and weather-resistant homes could be a good strategy in California's Central Valley!

Since early 2009, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has been contacted by more than 1,000 residents of 27 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia about possible chemical emissions from imported drywall that was used when their homes were built or remodeled. Most calls were from persons in Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia.

At this time, experts believe that defective drywall imported from China was installed in homes built or remodeled after 2003. The number and location of all affected or potentially affected homes are not yet known.

CPSC is leading the federal investigation into complaints about imported drywall. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are providing technical support to CPSC and several state health departments. CDC and ATSDR are working with other federal and state agencies to identify what chemicals are in the drywall and if these chemicals are a health risk to persons living in homes containing this drywall.

How can I find out if my home has imported drywall?

Corrosion: Are any of your home's copper pipes, plumbing fixtures, or uninsulated electrical wires at light switches or receptacles corroded? Have yourair conditioner evaporator coils failed early? Metal or copper corrosion of these
types may mean there is defective drywall in your home.

Odor: Does your home have an odor that smells like rotten eggs, matches, or fireworks? A sulfur odor in the home might mean defective drywall is present.

Label: Can you see the back side of your drywall? Some drywall from China is stamped with "Made in China" on the back. However, some Chinese drywall does not have a label or markings.

The Florida Department of Health developed a guide for residents to help them identify drywall problems.

What has been found in the air of homes that contain imported drywall?

State and federal agencies are testing the air inside some homes in Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi. They are testing homes in which homeowners suspect they have contaminated drywall and, for comparison, other homes in which no problems have been reported. State and federal agencies will evaluate these results to determine whether there is a health problem. This evaluation is expected in the fall of 2009.

How can Chinese drywall affect my health?

Some persons are more sensitive than others to possible chemical exposures. An exposure that causes no problems for some people can make other people sick or uncomfortable. Persons most likely to get sick from breathing contaminated air include the elderly, children, and people with asthma, allergies, lung disease, and heart problems. Until federal agencies get more information from the indoor air testing, it is not possible to determine if the symptoms people are experiencing are possibly from drywall.

What else should I do if I may be having health problems from imported drywall?

See or call a doctor if you are experiencing health problems and say that you are concerned your illness might be related to imported drywall. Tell your doctor about the health care provider fact sheet for imported drywall. A fact sheet from CDC tells your health care provider how to get more information.

• Go outdoors to get fresh air. Scientists do not know what, if any, benefit there is to opening windows to allow fresh air to come into the home.

Are there other problems I should watch for in my home that may be related to imported drywall?

• Some homes with imported drywall have had damage to exposed wiring. We do not know of any house fires that have occurred related to the drywall. If you experience unusual electrical problems in your home (such as appliances or light switches not working), ask a licensed electrician to check out the problem.

Where can I get additional information?

You can report a drywall problem to CPSC  by calling them at 1-800-638-2772.