The missing link

The Pacific Lutheran Morken Building

Green buildings are supposed to revolutionize the way the nation’s built environment operates chiefly by using less energy. Seeing as U.S. commercial buildings account for about 30 percent of carbon emissions, according to the U.S. Green Building Council, improving the performance of the built environment is a key focus of all green building rating systems. But the green building industry has a dirty little secret: Until recently, few people really kept track of how so-called “high-performance buildings” were actually performing.

The main driver for green buildings in the United States is the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (USGBC-LEED) rating system. LEED-certified buildings, at the basic Certified level, are designed to use 30 percent less energy than buildings built to standard code. It would make sense to assume that LEED-certified buildings at all levels do in fact perform as advertised.

“We’re not seeing the true performance we might have expected [out of LEED-certified buildings],” says Jared Silliker, owner of Silliker + Partners, a green building-focused consulting firm based in Seattle.

A study released in March 2008 by New Buildings Institute (NBI) looked at 121 of U.S. buildings that were certified by the LEED for New Construction (LEED-NC) rating system through 2006. Of those, only 75 percent are performing better than their counterparts that were built to code.

The study, titled “Energy Performance of LEED for New Construction Buildings,” showed a great deal of inconsistency in terms of many of the buildings’ actual-versus-expected performance. Because performance data is being collected and analyzed for very few buildings, not many designers, building owners or operators even know if their buildings are performing as advertised. It’s an issue of increasing concern, especially among insurance companies and law firms.

NBI’s study included data on just 22 percent of all LEED-NC buildings certified in the United States in 2006. Getting the data for the worst-performing buildings in the study was very difficult because they were being operated “with no intention,” says Mark Frankel, NBI’s technical director. “We couldn’t find anyone involved in the [maintenance and operations of the] building.”