Buildings Seeking LEED Certification Required to Provide Performance Data

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED green building certification system is the foremost program for the design, construction and operation of green buildings and communities. Photo courtesy the U.S. Green Building Council

The U.S. Green Building Council announced last week that it will begin requiring all buildings seeking LEED certification to provide energy and water usage reports as a precondition to certification. The new requirement is intended to make sure that a LEED-certified building will operate as efficiently as it was modeled during the design process. 

“Today there is all too often a disconnect, or performance gap, between the energy modeling done during the design phase and what actually happens during daily operation after the building is constructed,” Scot Horst, Senior Vice President of LEED, U.S. Green Building Council, said in a press release. 

By monitoring the buildings’ performances, the USGBC can further develop LEED standards and gain information that will help it educate building owners on how to make their buildings run as efficiently as they were designed to. 

Projects can fulfill the new requirements in one of three ways: 

1. The building is recertified on a two-year cycle using LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance. 

2. The building provides energy and water usage data on an on-going basis annually. 

3. The building owners sign a release that authorizes USGBC to access the building’s energy and water usage data directly from the building’s utility provider. 

More about LEED 

• The new requirement is part of the latest version of LEED. Find out what else is new in LEED version 3. 

• Make your home green certified. Find out more about LEED, Green Gloves and the criteria for these eco-certification systems.

• These prefab homes meet LEED Platinum ratings. They’re prettier than you might think. Check it out!