The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has opened the first public comment period for the first draft of LEED v5.
The new version of the LEED green building rating system will drive deep decarbonization, quality of life improvements, and ecological conservation and restoration, USGBC says. New emphasis will be placed on:
• Decarbonization: Focus on reductions of all significant sources of emissions: operational, embodied, refrigerants and transportation.
• Quality of life: The use of human-centric strategies to improve health and wellbeing, resilience, and equity and inclusion for building occupants and their communities.
• Ecological conservation and restoration: Emphasis on strategies and actions that can be implemented at the individual asset level to limit environmental degradation and contribute towards the restoration of ecosystems.
LEED v5 emphasizes impact, alignment, and interconnectedness to support initial and ongoing sustainability efforts throughout a building’s lifecycle. LEED v5 Operations + Maintenance puts existing buildings on a path to decarbonization and ties Platinum-level certification to near-zero carbon operating emissions.
LEED v5 Building Design + Construction provides a framework for new buildings to reach near-zero carbon emissions operationally by 2050 on a decarbonized grid. At the Platinum level, new buildings will be poised to achieve near-zero carbon operationally and embodied carbon reductions today.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
NAVFAC releases guidelines for sustainable reconstruction of Navy facilities
The guidelines provide specific guidance for installation commanders, assessment teams, estimators, programmers and building designers for identifying the sustainable opportunities, synergies, strategies, features and benefits for improving installations following a disaster instead of simply repairing or replacing them as they were prior to the disaster.
| Aug 11, 2010
Construction employment shrinks in 319 of the nation's 336 largest metro areas in July, continuing months-long slide
Construction workers in communities across the country continued to suffer extreme job losses this July according to a new analysis of metropolitan area employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released today by the Associated General Contractors of America. That analysis found construction employment declined in 319 of the nation’s largest communities while only 11 areas saw increases and six saw no change in construction employment between July 2008 and July 2009.
| Aug 11, 2010
Green consultant guarantees LEED certification or your money back
With cities mandating LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for public, and even private, buildings in growing numbers, an Atlanta-based sustainability consulting firm is hoping to ease anxieties over meeting those goals with the industry’s first Green Guaranteed.
| Aug 11, 2010
Skanska, Turner most active in U.S. hotel construction, according to BD+C's Giants 300 report
A ranking of the Top 50 Hotel Contractors based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants
