NEEP News
Design 2.0: How Green Is My Building?
Letter To the Editor by Jim O'Reilly
To the Editor:
Alec Appelbaum's Op-Ed article about the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, program ("Don't LEED Us Astray," May 20) was spot on. The main problem with LEED is that designers, builders and governments - with the United States Green Building Council's encouragement - are using it in place of better building design tools that will guarantee energy savings. After all, how "green" can a building really be if it isn't energy efficient?
An alternative would be an approach similar to Massachusetts, which adopted a building energy "stretch" code that guarantees energy savings through a combination of prescriptive and performance approaches that will save 20 percent more energy than the baseline energy code.
Better yet, what about embracing the Department of Energy's goal of broadly available net-zero energy buildings by 2025?
LEED has its place - but not as a model for true building energy efficiency.
James O'Reilly
Director of Public Policy
Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships
