As Important as It is, LEED is Emabarrazing

7/28/2019 As Important as It is, LEED is Emabarrazing

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As Important As It Is, LEED Can Be So Embarrassing

KAID BENFIELD

JAN 18, 2013

Trent Bell/Courtesy of NAHB

As most readers are likely to know, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) isa

voluntary set of standards for judging and certifying green buildings. It was developed by the US

Green Building Council, a consortium of industry (there are still formal requirements that certain

segments of the building industry sit on the board) and environmental interests.

The system is based on builder-applicants both meeting certain requirements (prerequisites) and

earning a minimum number of points from a menu of optional building components or performance

achievements (credits). Depending on the number of credits achieved, a qualified applicant may

earn a rating and certification at one of four levels (certified, silver, gold, or platinum). More than

7000 buildings have been certified through LEED, a slim majority of them reportedly located outside

the US.

A number of my NRDC colleagues and partners have participated in the US Green Building Council

and in volunteer committees related to LEED since its inception in 1998. My former colleague RobWatson, LEEDs founding chairman, devoted so much time to the development of the system that he

became known as the father of LEED. I devoted a huge chunk of my own time to developing a sort

of sequel calledLEED for Neighborhood Development, a partnership attempt to create standards that

could define and encourage smart growth projects in the same way that the original LEED had

defined and encouraged green buildings.
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The New American Home 2013.

Its not much of a stretch to say that, more than any other single force, LEED has put green buildings

on the map and institutionalized building performance measures shown to reduce resource

consumption and pollution. A lot of wood, water, and energy has been saved, a lot of pollution has

been avoided, and a lot of conditions protective of public health have been adopted because of LEEDand because of the hard work of USGBC and their volunteers.

Warts in the system

But, man, there are a lot of warts in this system. For starters, LEED has been criticized for being

insufficiently demanding of its applicants. I believe that, to the extent this criticism is well-placed, it

stems from a belief held by many involved with the Green Building Council, some of them

representatives of the building industry, that the standards should be set only a little bit above what

industry is likely to do anyway. The theory is that applicants will be more likely to adopt green

measures if they perceive them to be well within their reach if they aim just a little bit higher;

otherwise, the feeling goes, they wont bother and there will be no environmental benefit.

Another problem may be that USGBC, although a non-profit, operates as a business and needs

revenues to keep the system going; if difficulties in the standards or the process of application are too

demanding, fewer potential applicants will be willing to pay the costs of documentation and formal

review.


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A third charge leveled at the system is that LEED has become pro forma, more about earning points

than achieving actual environmental performance. The two are not unrelated, of course, but there is a

belief that applicants and their consultants game the system by going after low-hanging fruit to

rack up a good score, even if the underlying measure doesnt result in a significant environmental

improvement. I worked in a building that, when applying for a LEED-gold certification, simply

turned off its water fountains, presumably in a strategy to grab another water efficiency credit

point. The result was that the building probably did use less water, but at the cost of reducing

workers access to drinking water.

LEED also gives a point for installing an outdoor bike rack, which few seasoned cyclists in urban

situations would risk using, but not for actually giving employees bikes or heavy-duty locks, which

might be more effective in encouraging cycling. LEED even gives a credit point for itself; an applicant

who employs a LEED accredited professional will score higher than one that does not, even if theapplicants building is identical to one whose sponsor lacks accreditation.

The new face of efficiency

I recount this long-winded intro because my friend Lloyd Alter of the environmental

website Treehuggerhas just written a terrific storyabout a new, supposedly super-green house being

touted as the new face of efficiency even though its really a gigantic luxury house placed in a

location where residents have no choice but to drive long distances to do anything. This is ultra-

green? Sadly, LEED seems to think so.

In particular, did you know that this latest LEED-Platinum home the highest rating bestowed by the

Green Building Council, in theory only for the very greenest of green buildings is nearly three times

the size of the average new American home? Would you be surprised to learn that it sits on a lot

occupying two-thirds of an acre, consuming nearly twice as much land as the average new-home lot

in a US metro area? How about that it is located in agated communityon the far outskirts of Las

Vegas (Mike Tyson is a fellow resident), 1.2 miles to the nearest transit stop? Or that its Walk Score is

a miserable 38 out of a possible 100 points?
http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/new-american-home-shows-building-industry-has-learned-nothing.htmlhttp://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/new-american-home-shows-building-industry-has-learned-nothing.htmlhttp://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/new-american-home-shows-building-industry-has-learned-nothing.htmlhttp://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/gated_communities_are_not_nece.htmlhttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/gated_communities_are_not_nece.htmlhttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/gated_communities_are_not_nece.htmlhttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/gated_communities_are_not_nece.htmlhttp://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/new-american-home-shows-building-industry-has-learned-nothing.html


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The New American Home 2013.

The building in question is the latest in a series of showcase homes featured by The National

Association of Home Builders every year during its annual trade show. Its calledThe New

American Homeand the idea is to celebrate and publicize the state of the art in American

homebuilding. This one has 6,721 square feet of floor space, nine bathrooms (but only three

bedrooms, plus a home office and library), and extensive water features. The house also includes

17,261 square feet of "outdoor living space." (The average size of a newly completed American,

single-family home in 2011 was2480 square feet.)

It is one of 33 "estate homes" planned for the exclusiveMarquis Seven Hillscommunity, itself a

component of the master-planned Seven Hills development being built by Blue Heron Homes inHenderson, Nevada. The marketing tag for the Marquis enclave is "luxury without limits."

Ill grant that The New American Home 2013 is loaded with green bells and whistles. An article

titledThe New Face of Efficiencyand posted on NAHBs BuilderOnline website earlier this week

lists over fifty of them, including the use of certified wood, solar panels, energy-efficient lighting, and

a carbon monoxide alarm monitor. Overall, the home uses approximately 67 percent less energy for

heating and 83 percent less energy for coolingcompared to a similar home in the same climate zone, says

the article. (Put a bit more candidly, the building uses that much less energy for heating and cooling

than your run-of-the-mill 6,721-square-foot home in a desert climate where theaverage high

temperature in July is 104 degrees.)

The house has, according to the article, received an emerald certification from NAHBs National

Green Building Standard and, as noted, a platinum certification under the branch of LEED called

LEED for Homes.

To my eyes, the new American home is spectacular and beautiful. I love the architecture and think all

the water features would be soothing (and certainly a contrast from the buildings dry, desert

surroundings; Henderson, the exurb of Las Vegas where Marquis Seven Hills is located, receives a

merefour and a half inches of water per year). The photos look wonderful.
http://www.tnah.com/showpage_details.aspx?showpageID=11138http://www.tnah.com/showpage_details.aspx?showpageID=11138http://www.tnah.com/showpage_details.aspx?showpageID=11138http://www.tnah.com/showpage_details.aspx?showpageID=11138http://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.marquissevenhills.com/http://www.marquissevenhills.com/http://www.marquissevenhills.com/http://www.builderonline.com/show-homes/the-new-face-of-efficiency.aspxhttp://www.builderonline.com/show-homes/the-new-face-of-efficiency.aspxhttp://www.builderonline.com/show-homes/the-new-face-of-efficiency.aspxhttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.builderonline.com/Images/502511368_NewAmericanHome2012_01_tcm10-1745210.jpghttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.cityofhenderson.com/relocation_guide/index.phphttp://www.builderonline.com/show-homes/the-new-face-of-efficiency.aspxhttp://www.marquissevenhills.com/http://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.htmlhttp://www.tnah.com/showpage_details.aspx?showpageID=11138http://www.tnah.com/showpage_details.aspx?showpageID=11138


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But is it worthy of being certified LEED-platinum, the greenest of the green? Maybe not, if you

consider its outlandish size and challenging climate setting.

Environmental building performance is determined by location

And certainly not, if you consider the location. Contrary to myth, the environmental performance of

a building is not determined just by what happens inside the building. Research shows, for example,

that Americans generally consume more energy and emit more carbon dioxide getting to and

from a typical building than does the building itself. Research also shows thatlocation and

neighborhood factors can create a dramatic differencein how much energy is consumed and

emissions are generated in the getting to and fro.

Location of The New American Home 2013 (via Google Earth).
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Location of The New American Home 2013 (via Google Earth).

Guardhouse and gate to Marquis Seven Hills (via Google Earth).

Additional research also shows that evenordinary households in transit-oriented locations save more

energy and emissions than green households in sprawl, across several housing types. In other

words, a home with no green technology, if in the right place, is actually greener than a house with

every bell and whistle imaginable, even if the latter gets a platinum rating.

In the case of the New American Home 2013, as noted, the Walk Score is 38. Thats poor even by the

standards of notoriously sprawling Henderson, Nevada. Walk Score reports that 77 percent of
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Henderson residents have a higher rating. Las Vegas as a whole has an average Walk Score of

49. (Walk Scoreis a rough measure of how easily one might be able to get around from a given

location to typical daily functions such as food stores, schools, parks, and restaurants without a car or

with minimal driving.)

A typical household in theSeven Hillsdevelopment where this years New American Home is

located drives 20,053 miles per year and emitsmore than 8.6 tons of carbon dioxide per year from

household auto use for transportation. This is mediocre environmental performance at best, moredriving and emissions than even an average household in the Las Vegas-Henderson metro region, as

well as more than the average American household nationally.

All this means that a household living in the New American Home, all things considered, is as likely

to be brown as green in its environmental performance if the measure of that performance is

determined by a full accounting of the homes characteristics, no matter how many efficiency gizmos

are built into it.

Just to be clear, I dont really fault the Homebuilders for showcasing conspicuous consumption farbeyond most Americans wildest dreams, even if it remains a time of persistent unemployment and

struggling household debt. The purpose of the New American Home is to be impressive and

attention-grabbing while showing off building techniques and state-of-the-art products, not to show

where someone attempting a restrained green lifestyle would be likely to live. I think the

home isimpressive. While I personally wouldnt prefer living in a relatively isolated gated

community, I do like the way the house looks and would probably enjoy visiting if I knew someone

who lived there.
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Why a Platinum rating

But I do hold the LEED standards accountable for bestowing the systems highest rating on a building

that not only isnt likely the best of the best in total green performance but may not even be average,

considering its size, land consumption, climate conditions, and especially its transportation

characteristics. LEED does a lot of good; but, unfortunately, at its worst the system doesnt really

measure how green something really is but how many credit points it can check off for having

compliant technology.

The US Green Building Council is a fantastic organization of talented and dedicated people. Those

inclined to defend a platinum rating for an ostentatious house in sprawl would likely respond with a

theory of market transformation: a system of forgiving incentives placed in a certification program

for implementing green technology gradually transforms the market precisely because the standards

are not too difficult to achieve; as a result, more builders will employ green measures than they

otherwise would, conserving resources and reducing pollution, regardless of what might be

considered truly green.

In other words, since we cant stop peopIe from building trophy houses in the desert even if we

wanted to, we should at least encourage them to build those trophy houses a little better: if youre

determined to build a house almost three times bigger than the average American house, in a gated

luxury subdivision where you have to drive long distances to do anything, its better to do so with

green technology than not.

But, come on,platinum? The Seven Hills development wouldnt come close to qualifying for a

certification under LEED for Neighborhood Development, which takes location and neighborhood

design into account as well as building technology. LEED-ND includes a prerequisite that a
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development applying for a rating, even at the lowest level, include certified green buildings. As a

leader of the environmental groups involved in constructing that system, I supported that

prerequisite. I wanted us to create a system that defined and encouraged smart growth; its my belie f

that, in this day and age, smart growth isnt really smart unless it includes green buildings.

But why shouldnt that work in both directions? Why should a building be considered green if its

location is brown? Or, at the very least, why should a building qualify for the highest, platinum

rating signifying the greenest of all green buildings if it is completely dependent on longautomobile trips that will collectively emit more carbon than the buildings efficient heating and

cooling systems will save? Maybe ten years ago, the green building movement was so new that it

would have been counterproductive to have high standards. But we should be better than that now.

All images by Trent Bell/Courtesy of NAHB unless otherwise noted. Bottom image: Subdivision where The

New American Home 2013 is located (via Google Earth).

This post originally appeared on theNRDC Switchboardblog, an Atlantic partner site.

Keywords: LEED, Green Building, Architecture

Kaid Benfield is the director of the Sustainable Communities and Smart Growth program at the

Natural Resources Defense Council, co-founder of the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating

system, and co-founder of Smart Growth America. He writes (almost) daily about community,

development, and the environment. For more posts, seehis blog's home page.All posts
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As Important as It is, LEED is Emabarrazing