Top 10 U.S. states for green building in 2022

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) released its annual ranking of U.S. states leading the way on green building, with Massachusetts topping the list. The USGBC ranking is based on LEED-certified gross square footage per capita over the past year. The LEED rating system is the world’s most widely used green building program and was created by USGBC as a leadership standard defining best practices for healthy, high-performing green buildings.

“It was a strong year for LEED certifications across the U.S. as companies and governments embrace LEED as a tool for meeting ESG goals and organizational commitments to climate action, occupant wellbeing and resource efficiency,” said Peter Templeton, USGBC president and CEO. “LEED buildings are environmentally friendly, cutting their emissions and waste, and use less energy and water. At the same time, they also help reduce operational and maintenance costs, contributing to the bottom line.”

The states following Massachusetts—where 96 buildings encompassing over 26 million square feet were LEED-certified in 2022, equating to nearly 3.7 LEED-certified square feet per resident—were Illinois (3.47 square feet per capita), New York (3.17 square feet per capita), California (2.43 square feet per capita), and Maryland (2.39 square feet per capita).

As a federal territory, Washington, D.C., does not appear in the official top 10 list of states, but it consistently leads the nation in LEED-certified square footage per capita, in part because of the federal government and District’s ongoing commitments to green building. In 2022, the nation’s capital certified over 46 square feet of space per resident across 115 green building projects.

Here are the top 10 U.S. states for green building in 2022

Rank	State	Projects	Gross area (SqFt)	2022 GSF Per Capita
*	District of Columbia	115	31,759,516	46.06
1	Massachusetts	96	26,442,008	3.76
2	Illinois	91	44,577,321	3.48
3	New York	142	64,042,120	3.17
4	California	386	96,457,139	2.44
5	Maryland	80	14,769,661	2.39
6	Georgia	66	24,068,422	2.25
7	Colorado	59	12,532,909	2.17
8	Virginia	95	16,289,394	1.89
9	Texas	174	48,717,532	1.67
10	Oregon	36	6,066,035	1.43

In 2022, the top 10 states certified 1,225 projects and nearly 353 million gross square feet under LEED.

Since it was first established in 2000, LEED’s metrics-based system has set the standard for healthy, resilient, green buildings. In 2022, USGBC surpassed 100,000 LEED-certified projects globally, totaling more than 11 billion certified gross square feet.

Additional information on the 2022 rankings, along with a listing of notable projects, can be found on our Top 10 States for LEED page.

We offer the following recommendations in the hope that they will help step up the pace of high-performance building reconstruction in the U.S. and Canada. We consulted many experts for advice, but these recommendations are solely the responsibility of the editors of Building Design+Construction. We welcome your comments. Please send them to Robert Cassidy, Editorial Director: rcassidy@sgcmail.com.

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