LEED Rating System
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Why applying LEED in your building? Because:
- It measures green building performance.
- Every day 1.85 million square feet of space is LEED certified in more than 155 countries.
- More than 74,500 commercial projects are participating, 14.4 billion square feet of space.
- Different achievement paths are built in, the program is used for various building types in a variety of climates and localities, often synching with local laws and requirements.
What is LEED? LEED can be summarized as:
- green building guideline
- green building certification system
- integral design
- long-term thinking
- performance based (e.g. energy consumption)
- supportive in corporate reporting
- extra quality on design and construction
- extra control on HSE
- voluntary and demonstrative
How does LEED work?
LEED has four level of certification; Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
The number of points (credits) achieved determines the level of certification. Certain measures taken to achieve a more environmentally friendly building is awarded with number of points per targeted credit. Each LEED credit means certain points and a maximum of 110 points can be achieved.
From October 2016 the LEED version 4 is applicable to all building projects.
What choices new and existing building projects have?
Depending on the type of building project, LEED provides different frameworks (Individual, campus or volume), measurement systems (e.g. building design and construction, or operations and maintenance) and LEED schemes (e.g. schools, healthcare, retail, datacentre etc.). This allows for maximum flexibility and applicability to different building projects pursuing LEED design practices.