Chapter 5: Environmental Design Ratings Systems
Introduction
Ratings systems that target Green Building and other aspects of the built form are relatively new but since introduced have been instrumental in providing a framework for the design, construction, and operations of greener and more sustainable buildings.
This overview looks at 2 of the most impactful green building ratings system in use in North America and the predominant site design rating system.
There are a multitude of ratings systems that focus on more specific aspects of sustainable design – such as the Passivhaus system developed in Germany. See https://www.passivehousecanada.com, for more information on this approach – which focuses primarily on energy performance and air quality.
Green Buildings have been embraced globally – The United Nations is very active in this area –the United Nations Environment Programme has published the 2019 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction which provides a global overview of different systems and their implementation and popularity in many international markets.
The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) founded in 1993, first introduced its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system in 1995. Sufficient time has now elapsed to enable the evaluation of the effectiveness of different ratings systems. A recently completed report by the US Government Services Agency (GSA) – High-Performance Building Certification System Review may be found here: This document provides a summary of the rationale and effectiveness of the primary Green Building Certification processes utilized in the United States gained through experience over time by the leading government procurement agency in the US.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has also recently produced a comparison of Green Building standards: see EPA Study.
The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ) ratings system was the first such system to be widely accepted in the North American market and now has become the most widely used green building rating system in the world. From its humble beginnings the LEED system has been expanded and specialized to meet the differing needs of a wide range of building types and developments and today offers multiple ratings systems which have become more finely focused on the many different aspects of sustainable design particular to the type of building or development. Green building organizations have been established in many countries worldwide with LEED becoming the most widely adopted Green Building rating system internationally.
From its beginnings as a one-size-fits-all system aimed at the entire range of buildings – LEED has diversified through the development of more specialized systems aimed at different building types. Many other standards and ratings systems have been introduced in the interim – some of these are reviewed below. Ratings systems are now offered that have been developed to specifically address site development and Landscaping, whole building performance, wellness and many other aspects of buildings.
While these rating and evaluation systems have undoubtably encouraged the introduction and market penetration and diversification / specialization of green building systems, the intent and hard work needed to green the design and construction industries, should not be confused with what is actually required to actually achieve less environmentaally damaging buildings. With many thousands of LEED Certified buildings having been constructed over the past decades, it has become obvious that there are many discrepancies between the predicted and actual performance of many buildings which have been constructed following LEED, a performance gap now being addressed. Other systems – including the Living Building Challenge and Passivehaus are designed to rely on actual post-construction performance measurements to verify of design intentions have been met.
- LEED see https://www.usgbc.org,
LEED, developed by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) was the first green building ratings system that came into widespread use in North America. The LEED v1.0 green building rating system was introduced in 1995. At that time no other ranking or rating system was in common use, LEED 1.0 was introduced in response to increasing interest from the design and construction community for a system that would enable design teams to rank the sustainable design performance of individual buildings and enable the comparison of the performance of the green buildings then being designed.
Since that time, LEED has become the most widely used green building rating system in the world. From its original V1.0 multiple LEED systems have been developed to address fundamental differences in building types and functions.
While the green building movement is global in nature, the LEED program is administered by the USGBC. Many nations have now formed their own Green Building organizations.
There are 4 levels of achievement which the USGBC recognizes, based on the credit and points-earned system. Project teams select which credits are most appropriate to their project and prepare and submit related documentation for review. The system is divided into 6 categories which include multiple credits or points. Increasing the number of points achieved in general indicates an increasing level of performance. The USGBC recognizes 4 levels of achievement: Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
LEED Categories
- Location and Transportation
- Sustainable Sites
- Water Efficiency
- Energy and Atmosphere
- Materials and Resources
- Indoor Environment Quality
Current LEED ratings systems offerings include the following: (see https://www.usgbc.org/leed)
- BD+C Building Design and Construction: for new construction and major renovations
- ID+C Interior Design and Construction: commercial interior projects (tenant fit-ups)
- O+M Building Operations and Maintenance: for existing buildings
- ND Neighborhood Development: Project boundaries extended beyond single site to neighborhood developments
- Homes: for residential including Multi-Unit residential up to 6 stories.
- Cities and Communities
- LEED Recertification
- LEED Zero
Certification: The certification process for LEED is administered by the USGBC for all projects worldwide. The LEED certification process addresses both design and construction processes to include design intent and predicted performance as well as construction process and documentation issues. Projects are free to determine which credits they wish to pursue for their projects. Projects are awarded point(s) for fulfilling the requirements of a particular credit.
Due to LEED’s leading position in the market, both the USGBC and the CaGBC have developed many helpful resources – available through their respective websites:
USGBC: Resources include Reference Guides, research, articles and certification aids such as checklists
See https://www.usgbc.org/resources?LEED+Resources=[%22Addenda%22,%22Calculators%22,%22Checklists%22,%22Certification%22,%22Guidance%22,%22Standards%22,%22Rating+system%22]
The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC): The CaGBC see https://www.cagbc.org – has created a library of related supplementary Canada specific LEED documentation. As the USGBC administers LEED projects, much of the CaGBC’s efforts with respect to LEED are in this area as well as the development of resources in emerging areas of green design and practice.
Refer to Chapter 8 for more information on the CaGBC Zero Carbon Building Standard: see
https://www.cagbc.org/cagbcdocs/zerocarbon/v2/CaGBC_Zero_Carbon_Building_Standard_v2_Performance.pdf
- Living Building Challenge (LBC)
Approaching sustainable design from a fundamentally different direction from the checklist and points-earned approach adopted by LEED to acknowledge increasing levels of sustainable design achievement, the LBC approaches sustainability using the aspirational metaphor of a flower to guide the concept of this system – that any building could be conceived using this metaphor to describe how it could respond to its site in a manner similar to how a flower lives and engages with its site – it collects any food and energy resources it needs from its immediate environment, does not create waste and participates in a truly regenerative community.
The LBC was first introduced in 2006 by the Cascadia Green Building Council. In subsequent years, both the LBC and the Cascadia GBC have undergone many changes and expanded LBC’s breadth in alignment with its core concept of scale-jumping, a concept based on the idea that addressing many of the aspects of sustainable design inherent to the LBC are just not practical at the scale of single building.
At its core, the LBC is focused on the Regenerative Design principles: Wikipedia defines the term “Regenerative” as: “describes processes that restore, renew or revitalize their own sources of energy and materials. Regenerative design uses whole systems thinking to create resilient and equitable systems that integrate the needs of society with the integrity of nature.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_design
The LBC rating system is comprised of a series of seven performance categories, or “Petals”:
- Place
- Water
- Energy
- Health + Happiness
- Materials
- Equity
- Beauty.
Each Petal includes multiple imperatives of which there are a total of 20 within the LBC.
Unlike LEED where projects are free to determine which points or credits to pursue, LBC projects are required to address all Imperatives within a petal to achieve Petal certification. Only projects which achieve all 7 petals are awarded Living Building status
Living Building certification is based on what has been built and its actual operations rather than what was intended or modelled. For example, energy use is monitored once a building has been occupied and the Energy Petal is granted only after the building’s net zero energy performance has been confirmed after a year of operation.
3. Sustainable Sites Initiative: see http://www.sustainablesites.org
The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) was initially created by the American Society of Landscape Architects and the University of Texas and introduced in 2005, with the intent of defining a sustainable site-design ratings systems to help transform site design practices towards more regenerative outcomes.
Similar to LEED, SITES is a credit and point system, offering different levels of certification. The standard was acquired by the USGBC in 2015 and is now aligned with LEED, so that registered projects with either product can benefit through reciprocity to achieve the equivalent credit in the other, if the project is pursuing accreditation in both LEED and SITES. Unlike LEED, SITES is focused exclusively on site work and not buildings.
The SITES Ratings System + Scorecard are available here
Sites is organized around its Guiding Principles, which informed its’ development and its’ Four Goals,
Caption: SITES’ Guiding Principles, from https://www.usgbc.org/resources/sites-rating-system-and-scorecard, p. xii, accessed on Dec. 14, 2021
Media Attributions
- SITES Four Goals