Many local or national institutions have put a variety of certification labels for green buildings (LEED, BREAMÒ, HQEÒ, Built Green, etc.), to help stakeholders guarantee a certain quality level and to promote best practices.
Maybe the most famous and well-established worldwide is the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. The
national non-profit entity, developed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), a Green Building Rating System, used to rate new and existing commercial, institutional and high-rise residential buildings according to their environmental attributes
and sustainable features. The LEED system utilizes a list of 34 potential performance-based credits worth up to 69 points, as well as seven prerequisite criteria, divided into six categories:
· Sustainable Sites
· Water Efficiency
· Energy and Atmosphere
· Materials and Resources
· Indoor Environmental Quality
· Innovation and Design Process
LEED allows the project team to choose the most effective and appropriate sustainable building measures for a given location and/or project. These points are then tallied to determine the appropriate level of LEEDÒ certification. A full description of the LEED credits can be found on www.usgbc.org/leed/
Four levels of LEEDÒ certification are possible depending on the number of criteria met. They indicate increasingly sustainable building practices:
· LEED Certified 26-32 points
· LEED Silver 33-38 points
· LEED Gold 39-51 points
· LEED Platinum 52+ points
There is a general perception that LEED is becoming the standard for US green building design and probably for the world.
