Brenden Owens Presentation on The New LEED
Brenden Owen, from USGBC, gave an excellent presentation on the new version of LEED -- LEED 2009 in NYC on Wednesday evening, February 4. He covered five areas of changes that will set the LEED process apart from the current LEED rating system. These changes are:
The new certification point threshold levels are changed, and will now be:
In summary, the new LEED 2009 will emphasize the impact of building activity on climate change and and indoor air quality, with credit re-weightings to reflect this need. Energy Star will now be the new base-line for LEED 2009, and to be LEED certified, one must achieve a score of least 75 percent in this metric. There is discussion of a new ASHRAE standard, currently under development, known as ASHRAE 189 entering into the LEED rating system as a pre-requisite requirement in the 2011 version. Thus, the stage is now set for much more rapid changes to be implemented and be incorporated into the LEED rating systems as changes enter the market place. The other major change is the requirement of after-built building performance verification. The owner can choose to implement LEED EB as proof of this, or allow USGBC to verify this via a formal check of the building's utility bills.
A PDF version of the new LEED 2009 Reference Guide is scheduled to be released by USGBC on February 23, with a hard copy to follow later.
- Technical changes -- the system will be familiar, but the way we use it will be different, as we needed to figure out what needs to be brought to the market, and just how to do it. This was done by creating a three-tiered approach. First, the rating system will now be weighted differently to reflect area of most importance to the environment -- mainly climate change. LEED On-Line will also be re-vamped via a new infrastructure, but will function as before with letter template input. The certification process will be changed, and will now involve a mandatory after-built verification of actual energy performance. The rating system will now follow a vertical system, rather than the somewhat linear overlapping system of the present version, and will be more predictable to operate as buildings actually perform. A new two-year cycle will be instituted, so that every two years, a brand new rating system will completely be in place. In fact, work is well under way for LEED 2011. No longer will the versions be known as LEED V.2.2 or LEED 3.0; they will now reflect the year of introduction.
- A Bookshelf system from which all LEED credit areas can be drawn from across the various LEED products. This will allow credits to broken down like chapters, with the concept being the same within each parameter, but there will be different applications for different credit areas of the different LEED products. This new system allows for the evolution of new applications as they become available to the market.
- Re-weighting of LEED credits, based on environmental impact importance. Here, a five step process that measures impact, relative importance, impact categories (on/off), prioritorizing these categories by their environmental impact, and then using a calculation metric to finalize the resulting rating system. As said earlier,the decision was made to make climate change a priority, followed closely by Indoor Environmental Quality. As such, areas such as Energy and Atmosphere (EA) and Sustainable Sites (SS) will now receive more credit points, while Materials and Resources and Innovation and Design will have less points as part of the total percentage available. In fact, EA will now account for 35 percent of total available points, and SS will total 26 percent. In the process, the carbon impact was a major part of the calculation metric; hence this is why water conservation is now a more important item, as it was determined that extensive power is needed to treat and pump water.
- Regional Bonus Credits are now part of the rating system. As the term implies, these are based on the project location and its perceived impact relationship with the following items: Habitat protection, Storm water, Innovative waste-water treatment, optimization of energy, use of on-site renewable energy, and last but not least, building re-use.
The new certification point threshold levels are changed, and will now be:
- Certified = 40 points
- Silver = 50 points
- Gold = 60 points
- Platinum = 80 points from a total of 100 available points over the credit areas.
- As before, there will be mandatory pre-requisites that must be met.
In summary, the new LEED 2009 will emphasize the impact of building activity on climate change and and indoor air quality, with credit re-weightings to reflect this need. Energy Star will now be the new base-line for LEED 2009, and to be LEED certified, one must achieve a score of least 75 percent in this metric. There is discussion of a new ASHRAE standard, currently under development, known as ASHRAE 189 entering into the LEED rating system as a pre-requisite requirement in the 2011 version. Thus, the stage is now set for much more rapid changes to be implemented and be incorporated into the LEED rating systems as changes enter the market place. The other major change is the requirement of after-built building performance verification. The owner can choose to implement LEED EB as proof of this, or allow USGBC to verify this via a formal check of the building's utility bills.
A PDF version of the new LEED 2009 Reference Guide is scheduled to be released by USGBC on February 23, with a hard copy to follow later.
Posted by Alan L. Englander at 2/6/2009 12:20 PM 
Categories: LEED Credit Re-weighting, LEED ON-Line Reorganization, LEED 2009, Regional Bonus Credits, Bookshelf System
Categories: LEED Credit Re-weighting, LEED ON-Line Reorganization, LEED 2009, Regional Bonus Credits, Bookshelf System
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