by Brianna Crandall — May 6, 2013—After a long evaluation process involving extensive stakeholder input and varying opinions, the Green Building Advisory Committee established by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has now officially recommended to GSA that the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification system should be the main way to measure overall federal building efficiency and to show how agency buildings use energy and water, and that LEED standards are the most conducive to meet the Energy Independence and Security Act.
The Green Building Advisory Committee has evaluated more than 160 tools and systems since it began in 2011, and in February, GSA released a request for information (RFI) that publicly lauded the value of green building rating systems and asked for additional input into important issues that could help GSA accelerate and improve its green building work.
According to an article just released by Federal News Radio, GSA received more than 400 comments from 162 stakeholders from all facets of the building and academic industries as well as local federal and local government agencies. The full list of comments will be released later this spring, but the recommendation to use LEED comes from a study of more than 160 tools and standards, which found only three of them addressed the entire building system, including the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globe Certification Standard and the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge .
A study done by The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) found that GSA LEED-certified buildings used 25 percent less energy than the national average and cost 19 percent less to operate. GSA’s application of LEED has helped in the agency’s building efficiency efforts, and there are now more than 4,000 LEED certified government projects with another 8,000 in the pipeline as registered projects, according to the USGBC. A recent report from GSA shows the agency has successfully reduced its energy use by almost 20 percent since 2003 and water use by almost 15 percent since 2007, adds the organization.
