The lodging industry is clearly undergoing a major shift in the way that business is done. Hotel owners and operators are seeing the clear bottom line impact of green building strategies as well as increased consumer demand. Increasingly, reliable third-party tools and verification is being used by hotels to ensure that they are getting the results they expect, both in building performance and in marketing and credibility. The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED green building certification program is an instrumental tool moving the built environment towards sustainable building practices and is being widely used by the lodging industry for both new and existing hotels. As the industry advances in its ability to deliver and measure green building performance the program is continuously improved and updated with the latest information, technologies and processes. LEED v3–the long-awaited update to the LEED green building certification program, launched in April 2009 and introduced major technical advancements.
LEED v3 is an update for all of the existing LEED rating systems that address commercial buildings–including LEED for New Construction and Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance–the systems used by the hospitality industry most frequently. And while the majority of the individual credits will be very familiar, LEED v3 includes some important scientific and technical changes. All of the updated LEED credits have been harmonized and aligned, drawing on their most effective common denominator, allowing all credits and prerequisites for commercial buildings to work together easily, improving the experience of using LEED for various building types including commercial offices, retail, warehouses, and hotels. This flexible infrastructure helps ensure that LEED certification can be further refined to harmoniously address differences in regional environmental priorities and provide more targeted metrics for specific building types such as hotels.
Updated LEED Points
Every credit in LEED is developed with a specific intent in mind. LEED v3 improves and expands upon this idea by reweighting (or changing the number of points) assigned to each individual credit based on a 100-point scale and transparent set of priorities. Using the EPA-developed TRACI (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts) system, USGBC assigned a weighted priority to each of the 13 TRACI impact areas, with reducing CO2 emissions and improving energy efficiency being the primary goal. As a result, some LEED credits–such as those related to energy efficiency–were assigned additional points, aligning with corporate carbon reduction goals and making them relatively more important for projects to target as a part of an overall LEED certification strategy.
LEED 2009 also delivers on the promise of creating regionally specific credits. Because environmental priorities and financial opportunities may differ between different bioregions–the unique challenges in the Northeast related to the usage of heating oil, for instance, versus the particular urgency of water conservation in the Southwest–LEED will allow USGBC members, through USGBC’s Chapter network, to assign “bonus points” to LEED credits that address regional priorities. This essential evolution is a first step toward making LEED even more responsive to local environmental imperatives. You can participate in this process by getting involved with your local USGBC Chapter.
Green Building Certification Institute
The Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI)–created by USGBC in January 2008–now administers the LEED building certification process. Through a network of professional, third-party certifying bodies, the building certification process will have greater capacity, translating for LEED project teams into a faster, smoother process and the ability to grow to meet the scope and scale of the commercial real estate market. The certification bodies working with GBCI are well-known and respected for their role in certifying organizations, processes and products to ISO and other standards. Working together with the selected certification bodies, GBCI will deliver a substantially improved, ISO compliant certification process that will be able to grow with the green building movement.
LEED is already used widely across different space types, including offices, schools, government buildings, and retail. Currently, more than 800 new and existing lodging properties are registered for certification. While these building types may differ in the strategies they employ, the best metrics to measure their environmental impact are fundamentally the same. However, LEED will allow for greater adaptation of unique elements and opportunities in hotels. USGBC has worked with leading industry companies to identify areas where the rating system can be refined based on specific aspects of hotel design and management. Over the remainder of 2009, USGBC will continue to incorporate hospitality industry expertise into the consensus and member-driven process that develops the certification system. Through these efforts the technical requirements of LEED will be refined per the unique needs of the hospitality industry. While there are no plans to create separate rating systems specifically for different building types, the flexibility of LEED v3 will allow for the projects to pursue credits developed and adapted specifically for hotels.
Through enhancements to the technical requirements to LEED, a closer connection to the carbon footprint of a building, and scalable certification processes and infrastructure, the new LEED brings together the most relevant and technically advanced tools for all commercial buildings, including hotels. In its nine years of history, LEED has sought to create change in the way that we design, build, and operate our real estate–in turn, the program has evolved to ensure continued progress towards our common goals, a fiscally sound and environmentally responsible real estate market.
Marc Heisterkamp is the director of the Commercial Real Estate Sector for the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Green Building Council. He is reachable at mheisterkamp@usgbc.org.
