leed certification

green building

We are in the midst of a really exciting time for LEED and USGBC. LEED v4 will be balloted in June of this year[read more]

Why did the USGBC have to hold back on the release of LEED 2012, an update of it's wildly popular green building rating system? Rest assured that the decision was not made willy nilly – the new system had many industrial groups running for the hills.[read more]

The New York Times calls it “the biggest skyscraper New Yorkers have never heard of.” But earlier today, Silverstein Properties hoisted the final steel beam for its 977-foot, LEED Gold-hopeful 4 World Trade Center, topping out the understated – yet graceful – 72-story tower even while most eyes have been trained diligently on its more...[read more]

LEED 2012 is being pushed to 2013, where it will take a new name - LEED v4In a not so surprising move today, the USGBC announced that it will delay the release of LEED 2012. The delay pushes the release all the way back to June 2013 – triggering a rename from LEED 2012 to LEED v4. I cannot say that I am shocked. The USGBC’s CEO, Rick...[read more]

It’s a great time to be an existing building. First: President Obama released last year’s Better Buildings Initiative, focusing financing opportunities on commercial retrofits. Then: USGBC reported that LEED for Existing Buildings project square footage surpassed new construction projects. Now: A new report has concluded that...[read more]

I recently co-authored a chapter with Shari Shapiro of a soon-to-be-published book about green building law.  I am a regular reader Shari's Green Building Law Blog and she is one of the authors who helped me launch my own blog. However, I am going to respectfully disagree with one of her recent posts regarding green building...[read more]

Reader's note:  This is my last post on the LEED certification challenge.  Thanks for staying with me. I thought I would end my discussion of the Northland Pines High School LEED certification challenge with some constructive suggestions.  The LEED challenge issue is not going away anytime soon and clearly requires...[read more]

Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Wesst Corporation was recently awarded Silver LEED Certification in part through the use of indoor plants, only the second project to do so in the U.S. Credit for the use of live plants indoors was given under LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a third party rating system offered through...[read more]

Some days we get caught up in whether our brand-new buildings are going to be LEED-certified. It's become a great selling point to say that your new house is "green". But Pittsburgh is filled with old housing stock, and the most green behavior of all is re-use. Over in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Matt Grocoff is renovating a 110 year old...[read more]

I am going to be honest with you, I have been sitting on some LEEDigation-related stories.  I sat on these stories because I wanted to understand the implications before writing about them.   Take our first story from Wisconsin.  As was first reported at the Green Real Estate Law Journal, a group of Wisconsin residents...[read more]

On Saturday, I was having a leisurely breakfast with my wife when I foolishly flipped on my blackberry, opened my email and stared at the following headline: Comox Rec Centre not LEED anymore.  Breakfast was essentially over.  Never before had I seen the potential for LEEDigation stated so clearly in a headline....[read more]

The South Bronx is in the midst of a recent green hot streak which… well, you can find all the windy “In the South Bronx of America” history lesson stuff in this earlier gbNYC post about Melrose Commons’ LEED for Neighborhood certification. But at the risk of repeating ourselves, it’s pretty extraordinary to see the green efforts taking...[read more]