In terms of LEED alternatives, a growing number of state and local governments are adopting different green building standards that aren’t tied to LEED, such as California’s statewide CalGreen building code that took effect last year. In addition, several other rating systems are cropping up and gaining momentum, such as the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes, which is touted as a simpler and less expensive rating system.
“While this may be painful for the USGBC, it’s great for the green building world because we’re figuring out what tools work and where LEED fits into green policy,” says Chris Cheatham, a green building construction attorney in Kansas City, Missouri, who writes the Green Building Law Update blog. …
Still, a national debate about LEED could be on the horizon.
LEED was a necessary and wonderful awareness campaign. It is time to move on. We should move to a system where buildings are evaluated after they are built based on actual performance. Nothing else matters – and such analyses will cost pennies by comparison to LEED and other processes. Pre-performance systems review stifles innovation by redirecting dollars from improving performance to compliance studies that are inaccurate and overly influenced by industry. Why would we not want green performance standards incorporated into codes for all buildings? We do not need a huge, parallel, excessively expensive LEED bureaucracy shadowing building departments. David Schraer