USGBC Revising Forest Certification Benchmark for LEED

A second public comment period for the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) treatment of forest certification in the LEED Rating System is open until October 14, 2009. At issue is a collection of criteria that USGBC will use to evaluate forest certification programs to gain recognition in LEED. The first public comment period (see EBN Sept. 2008) attracted nearly 1,800 comments; guided by that input, the Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Group (chaired until recently by BuildingGreen’s Nadav Malin) revised, and the LEED Steering Committee approved, a new approach to the USGBC Forest Certification Benchmark.

The new benchmark abandons the all-or-nothing approach from the previous draft, under which a certification scheme had to meet all the specific guidelines to be approved for use in LEED. Instead it introduces a LEED-like structure of 48 prerequisites and 32 credits. To count towards the credit a certification scheme would have to meet all the prerequisites and 40% of the credits in the Benchmark. Even more significant than this structural change, however, is the comprehensive rewriting of the individual prerequisites and credits, making them much clearer and less ambiguous. Some new items include encouraging forest managers to calculate and consider carbon sequestration in their forest management plans. The Benchmark includes items that address all aspects of certification programs, including governance, labeling, auditing, and standards of forest management.

USGBC also provided, for informational purposes only, a “Conformance Assessment Process” that describes how a team of independent experts would evaluate applications from certification schemes and determine whether or not they meet the Benchmark. Depending on the outcome of the current comment period, a member ballot or substantive changes and another comment period will follow. If and when this new Benchmark-based approach is approved, it would lead to changes in credit language for the current versions of all LEED rating systems. The changes would also be available as an alternative compliance path for project teams using older versions of the rating systems.

– Alex Wilson

October 1, 2009

DISCUSSIONS