What is LEED green building certification?
Targeting green buildings with accurate and up-to-date credentials to meet occupier requirements can be made easier with LEED, but how does it work?
4 minutes to read
LEED is described as “providing a framework for healthy, highly-efficient and cost-saving green buildings.” Developed over the course of the 1990s by the US Green Building Council (USGBC), a non-profit engaged in the promotion of sustainable building design, construction and operation, LEED accreditations are now administered by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), whose technical experts apply LEED’s rating system for the review and verification across the gamut of real estate projects.
How are buildings rated?
LEED’s framework for rating projects has developed over time, with the USGBC continually refining its models since the launch of LEED v1.0. The latest version of the rating system, v4.1, was launched in 2019, and this iteration offers up-to-date solutions for a range of asset classes, at various points in their lifecycle.
Commercial real estate LEED certifications:
- LEED for Building Design and Construction (BD+C). New construction or major renovation projects & Core and shell development.
- LEED for Interior Design and Construction (ID+C).
- LEED for Building Operations and Maintenance (O+M). For buildings that are fully-operational and have been occupied for at least one year. The project may be undergoing improvement work, or little to no construction.
- LEED Recertification for occupied and in-use projects that have previously achieved LEED certifications, incentivising the maintenance and improvement buildings and their sustainable spaces.
- LEED Zero available to BD+C and O+M LEED-certified projects. An additional certification for projects with net zero goals, for carbon or other resources.
The rating system is centred around the accrual of points. Projects are judged and scored against a diverse range of criteria across as many as nine categories, with a maximum possible points total of 110. However, criteria and category weighting varies depending on building type and assessment category, in recognition of how different criteria may be more or less relevant to different assessments.
See the table below for a summary of the categories’ weightings across four core v4.1 commercial real estate certifications, spanning BD+C, ID+C and O+M assessments.
Assessed projects’ scores translate into four grades of ratings:
- Certified (40-49 /110)
- Silver (50-59 /110)
- Gold (60-79 /110)
- Platinum (> 80 /110)
What makes LEED different?
Cost is an increasing concern for office occupiers. In our 2021 (Y)OUR SPACE survey, 54% of respondents reported that their cost saving targets have increased since the onset of the pandemic, with 34% claiming their companies are aiming to reduce their real estate-related cost base by more than 10%. With utilities often representing a significant portion of an occupier’s total real estate expenditure, workspaces that can be powered efficiently are sure to play an important role in the pursuit of these targets.
The USGBC boasts a range of figures regarding the resource efficiency of LEED-certified buildings. Its website claims that LEED buildings consume 25% less energy and 11% less water, and additionally emit 34% less CO2 than non-accredited buildings. This gap is almost certainly going to widen, with LEED’s latest iteration now allowing projects to earn points through building performance monitoring. This means scores across its certification offering will become increasingly reflective of real-world in-use outcomes, as opposed to estimates and projections.
LEED can therefore be used as a benchmark by occupiers seeking workspaces that will support strategies to improve their occupancy costs and, with in-use building performance monitoring, as a means of tracking a measuring progress towards their goals.
The regular updates to its framework mean that the LEED standard is not a fixed benchmark, but one that evolves with the times, developing in response to the arrival of new technologies and market forces, and with the continual improvement of the methods behind its models.
However, the real value of LEED comes from the scale and scope of its implementation. Due to their global market presence, LEED ratings are helpful for multinational occupiers with green buildings policies that want a universal criterion for their global real estate strategies. The breadth of the LEED offering, spanning various points of the building lifecycle, and its comprehensive navigation of a broad spectrum of key environmental considerations, incorporating weightings to reflect the differing relevance of factors, means that LEED offers a single, robust and recognisable rating that can simplify and guide occupier decisions across a host of project categories and circumstances.
Our research shows 37% of the real estate leaders participating in our 2021 (Y)OUR SPACE survey have a target in place to increase the proportion of the portfolios with green building accreditations. With the scale and scope of these occupiers’ global office footprints, LEED will be one of the few certifications that they can build a universal strategy around and, as such, is sure to be in demand.
What it means for occupiers
Its accreditations provide considered ratings, incorporating a wealth of relevant criteria to deliver a meaningful benchmark for healthy and efficient buildings.
Also, with the scope of the certifications on offer, each leveraging models with bespoke criteria and category weightings, LEED ratings are awarded to commercial buildings of all kinds, and at all times in their lifecycles. These factors, coupled with the global ubiquity of the rating, make LEED a green building benchmark for consideration for multinational occupiers who, in incorporating LEED-based metrics into their green building strategies, could reap genuine, measurable improvements.