The Broken Promise of LEED

Kaid Benfield, on the broken promise of LEED’s “green” buildings:

In particular, did you know that this latest LEED-Platinum home – the highest rating bestowed by the Green Building Council, in theory only for the very greenest of green buildings – is nearly three times the size of the average new American home? Would you be surprised to learn that it sits on a lot occupying two-thirds of an acre, consuming nearly twice as much land as the average new-home lot in a US metro area? How about that it is located in a “gated community” on the far outskirts of Las Vegas, 1.2 miles to the nearest transit stop? Or that its Walk Score is a miserable 38 out of a possible 100 points?

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But I do hold the LEED standards accountable for bestowing the system’s highest rating on a building that not only isn’t likely the best of the best in total green performance but may not even be average, considering its size, land consumption, climate conditions, and especially its transportation characteristics. LEED does a lot of good; but, unfortunately, at its worst the system doesn’t really measure how green something really is but how many credit points it can check off for having compliant technology.

As I’ve mentioned before, to find true sustainability you have to look beyond the checklist and focus on stewardship - a comprehensive analysis of both the individual project and the context and system that project fits into. While the house Kaid describes can boast a full checklist of green strategies, it fails the test of stewardship. It fails because the reliance on the car for transportation makes the lifestyle of its inhabitants less sustainable than those in walkable neighborhoods that live in an 80 year old house with no insulation. It fails because its hardscape and vast pool ignore the context of life in a desert. It fails because of the inordinate amount of resources consumed to make this one enormous house with only 3 bedrooms. This is the broken promise of LEED: certified platinum but a putrid shade of green.

Kaid ends his excellent piece with a brilliant point:

But why shouldn’t that work in both directions? Why should a building be considered green if its location is brown? Or, at the very least, why should a building qualify for the highest, platinum rating – signifying the greenest of all green buildings – if it is completely dependent on long automobile trips that will collectively emit more carbon than the building’s efficient heating and cooling systems will save? Maybe ten years ago, the green building movement was so new that it would have been counterproductive to have high standards. But we should be better than that now.