Who could be more qualified than one of the principal authors of LEED for Homes to provide insight on the best ways to make the program work?

LEED for Homes, like other rating systems, is an assessment tool. This means that while it provides some "how-to" information (at the level of individual strategies or "credits"), it doesn't offer any guidance for how to approach the design and construction of a high-performing home differently than a conventional project. Ann Edminster will offer some of that missing guidance in this webinar.

It gets better. Not only do you not have to jet off to some city to sit in some auditorium during some high-priced conference to take this in... it's free. Just sign up and it's yours for the taking on June 2, at 2:00 pm Eastern (1:00 pm Central, noon Mountain, 11:00 am Pacific), right on your computer. A gift from GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.

The presenter, Ann Edminster, is a longtime green building mover and shaker. In addition to being one of the main people who developed LEED for Homes (she was its co-chair through most of its making), she's also a past member of the LEED Steering Committee, and a member and past co-chair of the USGBC's Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Group. She co-authored Efficient Wood Use In Residential Construction: A Practical Guide to Saving Wood, Money, and Forests, has written bunches of technical papers and articles, and has been an invited speaker at dozens of regional, national, and international green building conferences over the past 15 years. She's the founding principal of the environmental design consulting firm Design AVEnues.

The long-time-coming "BSR/ASHRAE/USGBC/IESNA Standard 189.1P, Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings" is open for public review until June 15, 2009. From the forward:

"Standard 189.1 addresses site sustainability, water use efficiency, energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality (IEQ), and the building's impact on the atmosphere, materials and resources. This is a standard for high-performance green buildings. It is not a rating system, though it could be incorporated as the baseline in a green building rating system. It is not a design guide."

From EBN, March 2006:

"The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE), U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) announced in February 2006 that they will cosponsor the development of ASHRAE/USGBC/IESNA Standard 189P: Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings."

From EBN, December 2006:

"Work continues on ASHRAE Standard 189P, a joint project between USGBC, ASHRAE, and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA)... the standard is intended as a way of putting minimum LEED performance into the form of a building code. Its place would likely be as an addendum to official building codes for municipalities that choose to require a basic green building standard for all new construction."

From EBN, October 2008:

"What was supposed to be a new minimum, code-enforceable standard for green buildings now faces an uncertain future. In a move that came as a surprise to its partners, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has disbanded the committee..."

From EBN, March 2009:

"ASHRAE has now reconstituted the committee with 34 voting members, including 16 from the previous group. New members include individuals representing timber, steel, utility, and commercial real estate. ASHRAE's move appears intended to insulate Standard 189 against procedural appeals from those industries, but it remains to be seen whether the larger committee with its broader array of interests can complete the development of an effective standard."

From the USGBC:

The consensus-based process that drives the development of the LEED rating systems is key to ensuring LEED encourages the very best in building, design and development practices. As LEED grows to cover the way we plan and build our neighborhoods, it's especially vital that we hear as many diverse voices as we can.

The second public comment period for LEED for Neighborhood Development opens today, Friday, May 1, and will close Sunday, June 14, at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Please don't miss this chance to be part of the development of the rating system!

See the updated rating system draft and submit your comments »

During the first public comment period that ended earlier this year, we received more than 5,000 comments, and we have posted responses to each of those comments at the link above. Please note that, in the second public comment period, only changes to the draft that were made after the first public comment period are open for comment.

The LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system integrates the principles of smart growth, new urbanism and green building into the first national rating system for neighborhood design. The program is the result of a collaboration among USGBC, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The rating system has been in pilot since July 2007, with nearly 240 projects participating. Feedback gathered from those projects, as well as countless hours of USGBC volunteers' time, have led to the current, more-sophisticated and market-responsive draft of LEED for Neighborhood Development.

You're aware of the major changes that are coming to the LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP) system. If you pass the exam now, you come on board through the older, more familiar system that doesn't require actual LEED project experience.

The key dates for the changeover have finally been announced.

Now all that's left to do is register for the exam by March 31, 2009 on the Green Building Certification Institute website.

Oops... the GBCI site isn't working. According to an announcement just posted to the USGBC site, "Due to unexpected website maintenance, we are extending the deadline for registration for the LEED AP NC and CI exams to April 1, 2009 at 11:59 pm (Pacific Time)."

You have an extra 24 hours. The winner here is anyone who takes the exam on April 1 and fails. That's because after registration closes, you only have one shot at it, before you have to wait a few months for a completely different exam. If you fail tomorrow, hurry home and register again! (Bringing your vinyl credit card with you, of course.)

Good luck everyone!

Thanks to my colleague Mark Piepkorn for noticing this situation.

I wasn't able to attend last week's BuildingEnergy conference, sadly. Most particularly, I wasn't able to get to Tuesday night's public forum, "What's Right and What's Wrong With LEED," featuring panelists Henry Gifford, USGBC's LEED Technical VP Brendan Owens, Steven Winter Associates' Maureen Mahle, IBACOS' Duncan Prahl, and energy modeler Maria Karpman of Karpman Consulting. It was moderated by Nadav Malin.

(Why was I so hot for that presentation? For a refresher, see Lies, Damn Lies, and... Another Look at LEED Energy Efficiency, and the terrific comments that follow it.)

At least we can all hear about the forum second-hand. The Boston Globe's green blog — which they call "The Green Blog" — posted How best to determine a green building? with the opening line, "A rant or a mugging?" (That piece is an edited version of the one on Michael Prager's blog.)

Read either or both of those to get to the "Least informative forum yet" reference.

More goodies: Fred Unger's thoughts at NESEA's blog, and Sitephocus weighs in on the controversy. There's another blow-by-blow at Green Real Estate Law Journal, but the reporting is based on Michael Prager's piece; however, the final three paragraphs pull some threads together in a way that's well worth a look.

Sea Change Radio recently had a great discussion with Alex Wilson. From their website:

Alex Wilson founded BuildingGreen in 1985, when the green building movement was in its infancy. As executive editor of Environmental Building News, the bible of green building, Wilson has provided the information that has formed the building blocks of the movement. In November 2008, Wilson received the Leadership Award for Education from the US Green Building Council, whose board he served on from 2000 until 2005, the crucial period when the organization created the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.

Wilson launches the conversation with a primer on green building and its history, starting with an explanation of LEED. He then compares indigenous structural design, such as the Anasazi, who oriented their dwellings toward the sun to capture solar energy, compared to design that developed in the age of cheap fossil fuel, which abandoned age-old principles of efficiency. Wilson points out, however, that the Anasazi civilization collapsed due to reliance on unsustainable water use — a fate our current culture may share with them.

Wilson highlights solutions, such as green roofs and urban agriculture which integrates into the built environment, citing the example of City Farm in Chicago. He then proposes the idea of passive survivability, the notion of designing our buildings to survive the kinds of challenges that will become more prevalent as the climate changes, such as power outages and water shortages. The beauty of this idea is that it's exactly the kind of design we need to achieve sustainability.

Download the interview, or stream it at the Sea Change Radio website. Alex starts about 5 minutes in.

At the 2008 "Summer Camp" in the Adirondacks. Photo: Mike Cox

Gail has been a key part of the green building movement since its earliest formative days. She was one of EBN's most enthusiastic supporters since joining our advisory board at the beginning of 1994, and was always willing to share wisdom and encouragement whenever asked. For architects, Gail was perhaps best known as chair of the National AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) during a particularly formative period when the annual Top-10 awards were launched.

For thousands of architects, builders, developers, and facilities managers, Gail is remembered as an enthusiastic and inspirational teacher. She led more than 200 workshops and charrettes on green building, and never failed to brighten and inspire those participants.

I remember sitting in one of those charrettes — I can't remember where or when. After each of the 30 or 40 of us sitting in a circle introduced ourselves, I was astounded to hear Gail repeat each of our names. It was one of Gail's many gifts, and it helped each of those participants feel listened to and important. It was all about them, the students, not about her, the instructor.

Among the many charrettes Gail was involved with were the Greening of the White House, the Greening of the Pentagon, the Sustainable Design Initiatives for the National Park Service, and the Sustainable Design Training Program for the Department of Defense. I remember her describing the bizarre ending of a charrette at a military base on September 11, 2001. President Bush was diverted to this base on his return from Florida to Washington after the terrorist attacks. The military personnel didn't know what to do with these civilian instructors in their midst so, in the panic, locked them up in a room.

Read more...

Since the Green Building Certification Institute announced big changes to the LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP) program (chronicled here), a few other key items have come out.

First, the final date to register for the LEED AP exam in its current form has been set at March 31, 2009. The final date for "exam retirement" has not been set (meaning you can take the exam after that date, as long as you're registered), but is expected to be late May or June 2009.

Read more...

Preston Koerner, over at Jetson Green, posted his "Top 10 Tidbits from Greenbuild 2008." Check out numbers 2, 4, 6, and 7:

2. The LEED AP Program undergoes major overhaul and the GBCI talks about LEED Green Associates, Legacy LEED APs, LEED AP Fellows, and the other family of LEED APs (ID+C, BD+C, Homes, O+M, and ND).

This item links to a post our own Tristan Korthals Altes wrote here on BuildingGreen.com's blog.

4. BuildingGreen soft launches a new online information resource on residential green building and remodeling called GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.

That's us.

6. The USGBC gives 2008 Leadership Awards to Alexander Karsner, Alex Wilson, Scot Horst, Ted Strickland, CB Richard Ellis, San Diego Gas & Electric Sustainable Communities Program, and the founding members of AIA COTE.

Alex Wilson! BuildingGreen's founder.

7. BuildingGreen announces their seventh annual list of green building products with the 2008 Top-10 Green Building Products

That's us, too.

Seriously, it's great to be a contributing cog in an organization that was a major player in defining the green building movement at its inception and is still at the forefront after all this time. Here's to the next 23 years.

Posted from Greenbuild '08.

Update posted 11/24/08, below: Do existing LEED APs need to retake the exam?

If you thought the proliferation of various different types of LEED rating systems was confusing, wait till you find out what the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) has in store for LEED Accredited Professionals (LEED APs), the folks who can pass an exam to be recognized as an expert in LEED. (GBCI, by the way, took over the LEED AP program about a year ago from USGBC.)

First, I'll explain what GBCI has planned for the 65,000 people (like me) who are already LEED APs. These people will be known informally as Legacy LEED APs:

Read more...