Leadership In Energy And Environmental Design Credits Research Articles

Achieving LEED credit for ergonomics: Laying the foundation

Despite guidance from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) on the requirements for earning a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) ergonomics credit in the Innovation in Design and Innovation in Operations category, few projects have received the credit. The University of California, Berkeley ergonomics program, Ergonomics@Work, has aligned the ergonomics strategy to those of the USGBC and LEED to achieve the ergonomics credit in several new buildings. This article describes the steps needed to obtain the credit and highlights the opportunities it creates to partner with the project team to promote ergonomics. As a profession it is up to ergonomists to create the road map that incorporates ergonomics into the green building design.

Selecting sustainable building materials using system dynamics and ant colony optimization

Selecting environmentally preferable building materials is one way to reduce the negative environmental impacts associated with the built environment. This paper proposes a framework that incorporates environmental and economic constraints while maximizing the number of credits reached under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. The framework helps decision makers with the appropriate selection of conventional and green building materials. It consists of two modules: System Dynamics module and Ant Colony Optimization module. The paper describes the developments made in these two modules, where the selection of building materials is carried out based on LEED credits and costs. The proposed framework provides more credits when using environmentally friendly materials. A case study of residential building is presented to demonstrate the main features of proposed framework.

A Framework to Reconcile Green Goals with Budget Reality

A public agency that decides to implement green design and construction features in its capital improvement program is actually adding an undetermined incremental cost to the initial cost of public buildings. Past research has portrayed these costs as a percentage increase, essentially creating an overall contingency for green buildings, but no work has been done to quantify the incremental cost on a building's actual design program that can be assigned directly to the project budget. This research sought to provide an objective approach to estimating sustainable design and proposes a framework for estimating the initial capital costs of sustainable building design and construction as measured by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification program. The framework allows tracking of costs during design and can be utilized for estimating future projects. The framework is developed using case study analysis of green building projects in OK City, Oklahoma. The paper concludes that the cost of “going green” can be estimated as a unit price basis as a cost per LEED credit. The proposed framework can be used by any public agency to determine the additional cost of LEED certification and for budgeting future projects.

Assessment of LEED Indoor Environmental Quality Parameters at a New Church Building In South-central Kentucky

ABSTRACT An indoor environmental quality assessment was conducted at a newly completed Catholic church building in South-central Kentucky as part of the United States Green Building Council's (USGBC's) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification requirements. From a business perspective, green building certification has become an important staple for demonstrating energy efficiency, environmental stewardship, and sustainability. The LEED certification process stipulates, among other things, that points be awarded for energy conservation as well as documentation that selected indoor air contaminant concentrations are below certain target levels. (It must be noted that any decision by a builder or architect aimed at obtaining the LEED credit point certification involves some financial commitment.) This article summarizes the results of a comprehensive indoor environmental quality assessment for four LEED chemical contaminants and selected parameters present in indoor air, with a view ...

Spatial variation among green building certification categories: Does place matter? A rejoinder to Pushkar

In a comment on an earlier article (Cidell & Beata, 2009) in this journal, Pushkar (2013) critiqued our use of the one-way ANOVA test for distinguishing among different LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) credits being earned by buildings being certified as green in different U.S. regions. Her criticism is based on dependencies existing among the categories of LEED credits. However, we argue that in both conceptual and empirical terms, such dependencies are not a concern, and therefore our original results demonstrating the importance of regional differences in green buildings should stand.

Urban sustainability and the LEED rating system: case studies on the role of regional characteristics and adaptive reuse in green building in Denver and Boulder, Colorado

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is the most widely recognised green building assessment system in the United States but is increasingly criticised for only rewarding incremental solutions towards sustainability. With differing perceptions of how green building is best achieved, here we focus on how geographical context and reuse of existing buildings are rewarded. The conceptual framework for our analysis draws upon a light green/deep green dichotomy in sustainability and architectural design. While a light green perspective achieves reduced energy consumption and pollution through technology and green gadgetry, a deep green approach focuses on local geographic conditions to work with natural climate systems through design informed by vernacular architecture, as well as the benefits of adaptive reuse. This study uses a descriptive case study analysis of LEED credit points earned in six certified buildings in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. Our analysis confirms that LEED rewards more light green approaches. There is limited motivation in pursuing sustainability through deep green methods, as recognition of them in LEED is quite minimal. We conclude that the balance against rewarding deep green design limits more transformative paradigm‐shifting advances in sustainability. Recommendations for improvements to LEED are given, as well as a discussion on emerging local governance in regulating green building. This paper contributes to the emerging body of literature focusing on green building as a mechanism of urban sustainability, and draws up the geographic perspectives of scale, place, and the political and economic linkages between humans and the environment in cities.

Prevention through design and construction safety management strategies for high performance sustainable building construction

Recent studies have found that Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) buildings have a higher injury rate than traditional non-LEED buildings and that 12 of the LEED credits increase risks for construction workers. The objective was to identify and describe risk mitigation strategies that reduce the safety risk associated with the design and construction of high performance sustainable projects by conducting extensive interviews with experienced designers and constructors. Fortunately, feasible prevention techniques through design and construction safety management strategies exist and can be used to mitigate the safety risk associated with the design features and means and methods of construction used to achieve LEED certification. Most commonly, designers and contractors identified prefabrication, effective site layout and alternative products as methods to prevent injuries that specifically relate to the hazards of each sustainable element. The results of the interviews and results from previous research were organized into a decision support tool built in Adobe LiveCycle. Practitioners may use the findings and the tool to enhance safety for construction workers, an aspect of sustainability that is not currently addressed in the LEED Program. Researchers may also use the techniques described as a starting point for lifecycle safety analyses for sustainable buildings.

Framework for Selecting Performance Assessment Tools for Achieving LEED 3.0 Credits

Architects, designers and engineers involved in a sustainable design project often require information and tools beyond energy simulation software. They look for tools to support their decisions and to assess the risk involved in decision making. This research presents a framework that links building performance assessment tools with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. The objective is to bridge the gap between architects, engineers, contractors, facility managers and LEED professionals. This work provides information about performance tools that can be used in the different phases of design, construction and operation of a LEED-rated building. This research presents a three-dimensional matrix of the ‘right tool for the right job at the right time’ by linking LEED credits, software tools and phases of building design, construction and operation. Overall, the findings of the research demonstrate that the framework can be used to achieve 21% of total possible LEED 3.0 credits by providing about 36% of total possible points.

Safety Risk Quantification for High Performance Sustainable Building Construction

AbstractA recent study found that Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings have a recordable injury rate that is 9% higher than traditional, non-LEED buildings. A follow-up study showed that there are distinct aspects of the design elements and means and methods of construction used to achieve LEED certification that have negative impacts on worker safety. The research described in this paper builds on previous knowledge by quantifying the percent increase in base-level safety risk resulting from the design strategies and construction methods implemented to earn specific LEED credits. A total of 26 interviews and 11 validation interviews were conducted with designers and contractors who had completed an average of four LEED projects, 100 traditional projects, in their average of 18 years of experience in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. The results indicate that design elements and means and methods of construction implemented to achieve 12 of the 4...

Acoustics and the leadership in energy and environmental design rating systems.

The leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) rating systems address acoustics explicitly in but a few of their many credits. More profound are the implications of LEED‐driven design on a building acoustics, typically in pursuit of LEED credits where no explicit reference to acoustics, noise, or acoustical design exists. Using project case studies as a guide, this presentation will outline some of the conflicts as well as synergies between “best practice” acoustical design and design decisions made on the basis of achieving certain LEED credits. A range of example credits will be presented along with the ramifications of such credits on building acoustics, including the effects of sustainable site credits on environmental noise isolation, energy and atmosphere credits on background noise levels, materials and resources credits on acoustical material specification, and indoor environmental quality credits on sound isolation and other acoustical design elements.

Two Studies that Investigate the Impact of Ceiling and Wall Reflectance Values on LEED Credits

This study is divided into two parts. The first study determines window size and size reductions for different wall and ceiling reflectance combinations that are needed in a classroom to achieve one leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) daylight factor credit. The second study determines the power consumption of indirect luminaires with a target illuminance of 538 lux for different wall and ceiling reflectance combinations. LEED credits for the optimizing energy performance are determined. It is found that ceiling reflectance has a higher impact on light levels and energy performance than wall reflectance. A ceiling reflectance of 90% and wall reflectance of 75% allows a minimum window-to-wall ratio of 0.444 to achieve one LEED daylight factor credit. The same room decreases lighting power density for an indirect fluorescent lighting system by one-third below the maximum permissible lighting power density specified in American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers/Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (ASHRAE/IESNA) Standard 90.1-2001. If lighting constitutes 50% of the total ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1 load, 0.92 LEED credits for the optimization of energy performance can be obtained for new construction and 2.92 credits can be obtained for existing buildings.