Strategies for LEED-NC-Certified Projects in Germany and Results of Their Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate strategies for the certification of environmentally friendly office buildings in Germany. A total of 39 LEED-NC gold-certified office space projects were ranked according to their “optimize energy performance” credit (EAc1) achievements from the energy and atmosphere (EA) category and divided into two groups: 13 projects (group 1) with the highest and 13 projects (group 2) with the lowest EAc1 achievements. Nonparametric statistics were used to evaluate the differences between groups 1 and 2. A two-stage nested analysis of variance test was used to evaluate the differences between the two groups in terms of their life cycle assessment (LCA). A comparison of the two groups showed that group 1 outperformed group 2 in the EA category (p < 0.0001). However, in the other LEED categories, the differences between the two groups were not significant (p ≥ 0.0761). As a result, group 1 outperformed group 2 in terms of overall LEED points (p = 0.0048). The LCA of EAc1 showed that group 1 enacted the lowest environmental damage when compared to group 2 (p = 0.0040). The environmental assessment of LEED-certified projects can help green building managers choose the most sustainable certification strategy.