by Brianna Crandall — November 21, 2012—A recent analysis performed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) shows that the sample buildings certified under its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program are performing in the top 11th percentile in the United States in terms of energy usage, and the average ENERGY STAR score for those LEED buildings is 89 out of 100 possible points. The announcement came at the start of USGBC’s weeklong Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in San Francisco, California.
The majority of the 195 buildings that were analyzed were certified under the existing building rating system. The buildings ranged in size from two thousand to three million square feet, with the average being 254 thousand square feet. The buildings were a mix of office and retail buildings. The analysis was based on LEED projects that have submitted data to USGBC both voluntarily and as required by LEED 2009.
For the last two years, USGBC has been tracking the performance of LEED buildings that are reporting their energy and water use data. Consistent with these findings, these LEED projects demonstrate Source Energy Use Intensity that is on average 47% lower than the national average (as reported through EPA Portfolio Manager). Under the current version of the LEED program, USGBC requires building owners to submit energy and water use to help projects understand and improve building performance.
A recent USA TODAY news story noted that 92.2% of the LEED for New Construction projects looked at for the news article are improving energy performance by 10.5% and that 89% of LEED projects are improving energy performance by 14%.
Building performance is the foundation of the LEED for Existing Buildings rating system, which is now the dominant LEED rating system based on square footage. Existing buildings are the fastest growing group of LEED buildings, notes USGBC.
Scot Horst, Senior Vice President, LEED, USGBC, noted that existing buildings could be made much more efficient “with readily available technologies and building management practices, like benchmarking.” According to Horst, “USGBC has put many measures into place that enhance building performance over the years. When a new building is LEED certified, it may be based on design projections and energy modeling. Benchmarking scores do not account for all the variances that can change building energy use, particularly operating hours and occupant density. There is also the fact that newer buildings on average use more energy than older ones.”
The San Francisco Bay Area, long known as a green building hub, is home to nearly 700 LEED-certified projects and 1261 additional LEED-registered projects in the pipeline. In San Francisco, the average LEED-certified new construction project is 25% better than ASHRAE 90.1 (1999, 2004, or 2007), the average LEED-certified existing building project has an ENERGY STAR score of 88 points and the average LEED project is Gold — 52%. The state of California was also on this year’s list of top ten states with the most LEED-certified projects per capita.
The LEED rating system is estimated to support nearly eight million jobs across all 50 states, and contributes $554 billion to the U.S. economy annually. LEED has been adopted in more than 140 countries worldwide, with more than 9.3 billion square feet of participating building space around the globe, including 15,000 LEED certified commercial buildings.
