Adapting to a New LEED World

For years, advocates of sustainable design have argued that interest in green building will take off when it stops being just about values and starts making good business sense. Thanks to LEED™ and the astounding success of the U.S. Green Building Council, that day seems to have arrived. The Council’s Austin conference was flooded by a wave of newcomers to green building—newcomers who are not unsympathetic to environmental goals but have chosen to join now primarily in the interest of their careers and businesses. (This issue of

EBN features highlights from the Austin conference.)

But business success can be a double-edged sword. While it would be foolhardy to suggest that green building should remain the exclusive realm of hardcore environmentalists, it is all but inevitable that its transition to mainstream will bring pressure to compromise the underlying values. Since these values are different for everyone, the debate over where to draw that line is gaining steam, and it is unlikely to subside anytime soon.

But even values-driven green professionals have businesses and organizations to run. At this practical level, too, the industry’s growth creates both tremendous opportunities and new challenges—for the Council itself, for its members, and for almost everyone else in the green building field. Those of us who have been active in what was a niche market suddenly find ourselves playing in a new—and much larger—sandbox. The changes mean something different for everyone; here are a few examples gleaned largely from conversations at the Austin conference:

•Other membership organizations that had been carrying the sustainable design torch, such as the American Solar Energy Society and the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment, are now scrambling to redefine their roles and find a place in or alongside the LEED caravan. Regional groups are becoming USGBC “Affiliates” (see page 8), partly to avoid competing with the many new local Council chapters.

•Experienced green designers are trying to figure out how to differentiate their services from those of the hundreds of newly minted LEED-accredited professionals. One green architect noted a growing business in salvaging projects for clients who had hired LEED-accredited but otherwise unprepared designers.

•Consultants are reorganizing their practice around LEED implementation. Ironically, Council founder David Gottfried says that LEED has cut his typical consulting fees dramatically—while he used to get paid to help define green building for a client, now he just helps them follow LEED.

•Publishers (including BuildingGreen) are striving to serve the growing demand for LEED-related information without competing head-on with the Council, which is also counting on revenue from that demand.

For all these players, success will require effective adaptation to a world that is dominated by the enormous success of LEED and the Council. The opportunities are plentiful, but we can’t afford to ignore the risks that accompany those opportunities.

One of those risks is the possibility of “selling out” to shortsighted commercial interests. This movement was built on the power of ecological values, and it strays from those values at its peril. LEED certification, even at the Platinum level, is merely an arbitrary benchmark set in relation to current practice, not an indicator of any absolute achievement. (A study for the Packard Foundation headquarters, described on page 7, helps illuminate this distinction.) CEO-turned-activist Ray Anderson, chairman of Interface Corporation, reminded us how far we have to go as he accepted a Sacred Tree Award at the Gala Dinner: “We will begin approaching sustainability when LEED is at version 99,” he said, adding: “Don’t stop raising the bar.”

– Nadav Malin