LEED certification helps companies fulfill environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals while saving money on energy costs. Having a LEED professional on your team will help you understand the process and identify affordable techniques for earning credits.
The LEED rating system addresses sustainability across several areas, including water, energy, air, and waste. It also includes credits for specifying sustainable products.
Reduced Environmental Impact
LEED certification helps to transform the built environment by incorporating sustainability practices into design and construction projects. Whether you are seeking a sustainable office space, or an industrial warehouse that is able to minimize the impact of its operations on the environment, LEED can help. This rating system establishes requirements for buildings and neighborhoods that focus on energy savings, water efficiency, location efficiency, improved indoor environmental quality, stewardship of resources, and sensitivity to their impacts.
Achieving a building’s LEED certification requires detailed documentation and verification of compliance with prerequisites and credits. This process can be time-consuming and difficult, especially for project teams that are working with multiple stakeholders and consultants.
In addition, the LEED standards continue to evolve and expand to align with new sustainable practices and technologies. Keeping up with these developments can be challenging for professionals who are not familiar with the rating system.
The benefits of LEED include reduced environmental impact, healthy occupants, and a commitment to the long-term sustainability of the built environment. However, the initial investment required to implement sustainable technologies and construction techniques may be a deterrent for some developers and building owners. This can be mitigated by planning in advance, assembling a team of professionals who are familiar with LEED requirements and practices, and focusing on cost-effective actions. For example, LEED points for water conservation can be obtained through simple measures like using low-flow toilets and faucets, while LEED points for sourcing materials locally or regionally can be earned through the use of recycled content or green cleaning and pest management methods.
Healthy Occupants
With an increased focus on wellness, LEED certification has expanded to prioritize human health in building design. The latest versions of the rating system reward buildings that provide healthy indoor environmental quality with requirements like access to natural light, non-toxic building materials, and water conservation.
Energy efficiency is a key component of the LEED rating system, which rewards projects for energy-related credits by providing measurable and verifiable energy savings. PermaTherm insulation is a great way to achieve these energy-related points by contributing to a building’s insulation R-value and reducing air infiltration, which ultimately results in reduced heating and cooling expenses for the occupants.
Green construction also reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change, ozone depletion, and acidification of land and water. To mitigate these impacts, LEED credits encourage recycling and diversion of construction waste and promote general circular economy practices by awarding points for the recovery and reuse of products and materials. Mutual Materials produces a wide range of construction materials that can help earn these credits through their sustainability benefits, including recycled content and the ability to be recycled or repurposed in the future.
LEED also places emphasis on sustainable water management, requiring buildings to achieve a minimum of 10 points in this category by conducting regular water audits, tracking and measuring consumption levels, and implementing measures to increase the efficiency of building water use. Water monitoring helps identify leaks quickly and prevents the growth of mold and mildew, improving occupant comfort and satisfaction while ensuring that building materials are protected from water damage.
Minimized Embodied Carbon
The GSA requires all new construction and substantial renovation of federal buildings to meet LEED Gold standards. This system has been a catalyst for greening the built environment across the country and internationally. LEED is used by architects, real estate professionals, construction managers, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects and emissions experts.
Existing certification systems like BREEAM and LEED focus on operational energy, but do not take into account the environmental impacts of embodied carbon emissions caused by the energy required to construct a building and manufacture its components. By including embodied carbon consideration as a credit, LEED v4.1 is helping to put this important issue on the radar.
LEED’s embodied carbon credit rewards projects for reducing whole-building life cycle impact through the use of a variety of techniques, from sourcing raw materials with low global warming potential to implementing on-site renewables. It also recognizes a project’s commitment to future sustainability through a monitoring and reporting system.
The most important factor in a building’s embodied carbon impact is the choice of materials. Locally sourced materials reduce the need for long-haul transportation and its associated carbon emissions, while also supporting regional economies and contributing to the cultural identity of the surrounding area. In addition, selecting insulation with proper R-value is one of the most effective ways to minimize a building’s embodied carbon.
Transparency
The materials and resources category of LEED includes requirements to specify products with low toxic emissions, recycled content, and local sourcing. In addition, the framework encourages project teams to prioritize materials that sequester carbon in order to mitigate climate change.
These goals can be achieved through a variety of methods, including using building materials that are locally sourced or that have been manufactured in a circular fashion to minimize extraction and waste. Locally sourced materials also reduce transportation costs and emissions, as well as contribute to the overall sustainability of a region.
Additionally, the use of locally sourced materials can improve a project’s resilience against disruptions to supply chains, such as extreme weather events. It also promotes regional identity by integrating materials into the design that reflect the cultural context of the area.
In the future, transparency will become increasingly important in meeting these sustainable goals. This is why USGBC recently introduced a new credit to encourage manufacturers to disclose their product ingredients. It will reward projects that use products and materials with a publicly available list of ingredients, or that have been verified to meet California Proposition 65 requirements.
ASSA ABLOY is a proud supporter of these efforts and works with independent, third-party transparency documents, such as Health Product Declarations (HPDs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), which can satisfy the requirement for this new credit. In our previous blog, 3 Reasons Why HPDs Increase Specification Opportunities, we discussed the importance of these documents and how they can help achieve LEED v4 credits.