'Green' code under construction

The U.S. Green Building Council expects to substantially revise LEED next year, forcing builders beginning in 2015 to take new and more-detailed steps to get buildings certified as environmentally friendly by the private non-profit group.

The revision, if approved by the council's 13,000 members in June, will change some of the easier strategies that builders have used to get new commercial projects LEED-certified. It also seeks to address concerns that certified buildings do not live up to their projections of reduced energy and water use. Some proposed changes have generated so much concern from the building industry that the council put off making the new version mandatory until June 2015, allowing builders to continue to use the LEED version that took effect in 2009.

"The bar is getting raised, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's harder to meet because of the way the whole industry is evolving," said Nadav Malin, president of BuildingGreen, a consulting and publishing firm that writes a LEED user's guide.

The new standards would require building operators to write a plan for running the building efficiently and to tell the building council about energy and water use for five years. Both measures aim to help buildings meet their predicted energy and water consumption. The predictions earn "points" toward LEED certification but are based on models done before construction and often underestimate how much energy and water will be used once people move in.

Buildings that fall short of their predictions will not be penalized or lose their LEED certification. The requirement for reporting energy stops short of the Energy Department's voluntary EnergyStar program, which rates a building's energy consumption annually to determine whether it deserves recognition in any year.

Building council Senior Vice President Scot Horst said the new version will include "a significant jump in the required energy efficiency."

Other major changes apply to the long checklist of green options that builders choose to incorporate. Buildings must have a minimum number of options — or earn sufficient green points — to get LEED certification. A new commercial building needs 40 out of 100 points.

A major change will allow project teams to earn points for using materials and products that disclose their ingredients and are grown or extracted and made in an environmentally responsible way. Public-health advocates support a controversial addition that discourages the use of materials that include potentially hazardous chemicals and materials.

"They have finally come forward with pretty robust credits" on building materials, said Tom Lent, policy director at the Healthy Building Network, which advocates for making buildings free of harmful materials.

The American Chemistry Council opposes the credit, one point, for discouraging potentially hazardous substances, saying it will reward builders for avoiding common chemicals and materials such as vinyl, which is used in windows, roofing and insulation to help energy efficiency. In a June letter to Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chemistry council President Cal Dooley said the provision would "remove the use of dozens of useful materials and hundreds of proven building products."

Other proposed changes would:

-- Add dishwashers and washing machines to the list of plumbing items that must help minimize water use.

-- Require buildings that seek a point for having bike racks and showers to also be near bike-friendly streets.

-- Allow buildings to get a point for minimizing background noise.

"It's going to require a much more nuanced, sophisticated measure in a whole bunch of different ways of the actual environmental performance of the building," Malin said.

Approximately 13,500 commercial buildings in the U.S. have been certified under LEED since its launch in 2000. Another 30,000 have taken an initial step toward getting LEED certification and will not have to use the revised version of LEED.