Massachusetts, Colorado, Illinois lead annual Top 10 States for LEED Green Building list

Massachusetts, Colorado, and Illinois lead the list of the Top 10 States for LEED, an annual ranking of U.S. states that made significant strides in sustainable building design, construction, and transformation over the past year.

Washington, D.C., is not included in the list of top states due to its status as a federal territory, but its 29.04 sf of LEED space per resident is more than any individual state.

This year’s list has the highest average (2.55 sf) per capita of LEED-certified space among the top 10 states since 2010. Four of the nine states included in the 2015 list increased the square feet of space they certified per resident in 2016 (Massachusetts, Colorado, California and Virginia).

In 2016, LEED for Building Operations and Maintenance was the most popular rating system within the Top 10 States, representing 53% of the total square footage certified. LEED for Building Design and Construction was the second most popular rating system, at 42% of the square footage certified.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.