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Over 100 green building professionals and LEED® experts from 16 European Countries have recently gathered in Berlin to take part in a high-profile technical meeting organized by U.S. Green Building Council with the support of the German Green Building Association (GGBA). The two-day workshop, which was hosted at Sheraton Palace Hotel last September 21st and 22nd, focused on the application of LEED® green building rating system in Europe.
The event facilitated an interesting open discussion particularly oriented to collect feedbacks from European building industry representatives, about contents, standards and innovation included in LEED rating systems.
Central topic was the new LEED® v4, released on September 2013, which is set to completely replace LEED® 2009 in October 2016, when the sunset of LEED®2009 will occur.
The most important outcome of this experience was the clear statement of consistency between LEED® goals and the European Directives objectives, especially for what concerns energy efficiency. This has been made possible thanks to the effort of U.S. Green Building Council, which released in 2014 the first set of alternative compliance paths (ACPs) for building projects pursuing LEED® certification in Europe. Developed in close collaboration with the European members of the LEED® International Roundtable, the ACPs aim to recognize and to incorporate regional (in this case, Europe region) directives, standards and best practices into the rating system language while facilitating the application of LEED® certification worldwide.
This is part of a continuous process of improvement, which aims to make LEED® more effective and market-oriented.
Moreover, a specific discussion went through the newly introduced LEED® v4 requirements, which recognize some crucial criteria about building materials in Europe, such as Life Cycle Assessment, Environmental Product Declaration, Health Product Declaration, etc. There is a shared feeling that the application of the above is still challenging; however, as the future of green building assessment is moving towards the whole building performance evaluation, manufacturers should be ready to skip into the new version of LEED® by providing low-impact materials with green attributes properly documented.
Education, integrated design approach and design optimization along with performance monitoring are key points that LEED® highlights, particularly in Version 4. These are also crucial instruments to facilitate the Real Estate market transformation, towards the ambitious objective to minimize emissions of the built environment.
Written by Daniele Guglielmino | BArch., MArch, Ph.D., LEED® AP™, USGBC® Faculty™