LEED On Its Way Out?

10 October 2009 - 5:00am

As part of GOOD's Top 100 Ideas of 2009, author Jacob Gordon celebrates the fact that other standards of efficiency are gaining traction abroad and in the US.

"But LEED’s big weakness is that all of its measurements happen on the computer screen before the first bulldozer arrives. According to the USGBC’s best calculations, LEED buildings use 25 to 30 percent less energy—while more critical calculations show them as no more efficient, or in some cases worse, than their non-LEED counterparts.

Because LEED buildings don’t have to perform up to spec in real life, LEED has contributed to a trend of showboating and point scrounging, leaving energy efficiency—arguably the most important metric—lost in the shuffle."

Source: Good, October 7, 2009

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

LEED Buildings

And then there is the problem of all the LEED buildings that cause an increase in vehicle miles traveled because of where they are located.

Bookmark and Share
Almost 2,000 big plots of land in high-visibility parts of American communities will be empty and available for reuse. So what should cities do with these soon-to-be-empty spaces?