Rating Systems Challenge Builders No Matter What the Project

LEED and Built Green rating systems both have advantages, but a recent King County study shows Built Green is more stringent.

By Fiona Cohen

What’s in a green building?

In the Pacific Northwest, there are two ways to answer that question: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (or LEED), and Built Green, a system promoted in Washington by the Master Builders Association. A report by the City of Seattle and King County compared the two rating systems, looking at residential developments. Staff plan to release it this summer.

They found that when it came to curbing greenhouse gas emissions and saving energy, Built Green’s four and five star ratings required stricter standards than all levels of LEED, particularly in multi-family developments.

“If you’re using LEED, you have to get really aggressive and not just meet the bare minimums to get the energy efficiencies you can get for Built Green,” said Patti Southard, manager of King County’s Green Tools program.

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Built Green required a 15% improvement over Washington State Energy Code in four star developments, and a 30% improvement in five-star buildings. LEED used a lower standard, based on a 14% improvement over a standard from The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).

Washington plans to increase its efficiency demands a further 30 percent, starting in 2010. When that happens, the Built Green standard will change with it.

Built Green has more pre-requisites than LEED, says the report, plus with each added star in the rating, the number of specific requirements increases. With LEED, the prerequisites are the same, no matter what the rating. A higher rating (say, silver, gold or platinum) simply means the developer racked up more additional points.

Built Green reads like a set of specific instructions for a builder, whereas LEED reads like a general outline on goals.

For example: the LEED for homes checklist on making homes energy efficient is simple: there’s a pre-requisite of Energy Star for Homes, 34 points for “exceptional energy performance,” two items on water heating, and two items on refrigerants. Built Green’s checklist has 77 items in its energy efficiency section, including a point for providing an outdoor clothesline.

But every one of LEED’s general points need to be independently verified, before certification, while Built Green only requires verification at the four and five star level, and not everything needs to be verified.

“We only verify all the required items and all the high point value items. Then only a total of 60 percent of the points need to be verified,” says Alistair Jackson, of O’Brien & Company, who evaluates LEED and Built Green properties.

Judd Kirk, President of Port Blakely Communities, had some experience with both systems during the construction of Issaquah Highlands. Port Blakely required all the builders making homes there to construct them to at least a Built Green four star level. The company itself built a LEED gold-rated office building.

“They each had their pluses,” Kirk said.

“Bearing in mind it’s a totally different context, I think LEED was tougher and more extensive, and tougher is not necessarily bad. I think Built Green offered a lot more flexibility and was a not very burdensome process.”

Built Green was set up in a way that builders could review the details, check the boxes, and see clearly how close they were to four stars. In LEED, it wasn’t quite clear until the evaluation.

“There were points for everything, but you didn’t know until the end whether you’d get the points,” Kirk said.

The rating systems emphasize different areas of environmental building.

Built Green focuses on materials, while LEED has more points for indoor air quality and site choice.

The Issaquah Highlands community center was rated using both systems.

Where Built Green has two items on site choice (10 points for building on an infill lot and four points for avoiding sensitive areas), LEED for homes allows builders to collect points for building on infill or previously developed lots, using previously existing infrastructure, density, building close to neighborhood amenities, green space and public transit.

The argument in favor of LEED giving these credits is that building in urban areas does have an environmental benefit. For example, some researchers at the University of Toronto compared energy use and greenhouse emissions from people who lived in urban and suburban portions of Toronto.

Their results, published in 2006, showed suburban residents generated more than twice as much greenhouse gases as the urbanites, mostly because of transportation.

Southard says LEED’s urban emphasis could put off suburban developers.

“I think what we need to be conscious of in the green building industry is not alienating people. It’s up to the planning and the zoning to take care of where people site their development.”

Aaron Adelstein, director of Built Green, says his organization has certified 14,000 properties over the past decade. Since the four and five star levels were introduced, in 2005, they’ve certified around 1,000 at that level.

Most builders favor the three star level, which doesn’t require the third party verification.

“The higher levels are gaining traction, but they still aren’t the bulk.”

Some options within Built Green are more popular.

“We’re seeing quite a few projects that avoid lawns altogether or use drought-tolerant plants. We’re seeing a high rate of use of Energy Star furnaces and appliances and compact fluorescent light bulbs.”

Recycling construction waste saves builders money, so it’s popular, Adelstein says. And low VOC paints are almost universal.

Both rating systems change frequently, because of changes in the building code.

Adelstein says Built Green revises the check lists every two years.

“We’ve removed probably hundreds of items in total, and added others as the market has become more sophisticated,” he says.

Jason McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, which administers LEED in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, says that LEED has seen exponential growth in the number of projects that certify. And he says that LEED’s residential building standards have “more teeth” than their Built Green counterparts, because of the third-party verification, and the standards themselves.

Like Adelstein, he’s seeing his office get busier.

“Even in this economy we have a record number of corporate members registering projects.”

He said that the options people tended to choose were “anything that has a payback,” such as energy savings. Developers also favored strategies that didn’t cost them extra, such as low VOC paints. But he said people tend to become more ambitious over the years.

“Some people are going to start with stuff that’s easy and not scary or that makes them money. They’re going to move to things that might have longer pay backs or might seem more strange at first, but they aren’t strange.”

Kirk sees the two rating systems as a sign that the green building movement is thriving.

“I think it’s healthy to have two organizations, as long as they are both transparent and credible in what they do.”