The movement caught on fastest in the Northwest, a region long at the leading edge of environmental trends from curbside recycling to anti-sprawl urban planning.
Developers, architects and designers from Portland to Vancouver, B.C. built more, and bigger, green buildings than their counterparts elsewhere. Cities, too, drew up policies encouraging the construction of buildings that consume less water and power, and provide healthier indoor climates than traditional structures.
"This is the center of the universe for green building," Rick Fedrizzi, chief executive of the council, told about 150 of the movement's true believers this week in Seattle.
But that universe is expanding. The trend has increasingly caught on over the past five years, with more green buildings going up in more cities across the country.
As the concept gained popularity, those at the center of the movement wondered whether it was time to redefine what it means to be green. Should the council tighten its standards to encourage innovative buildings that approach some elusive ideal of sustainable construction? Or should it keep the standards simple and continue to make inroads into the building industry's mainstream?
At the Cascadia Region Green Building Council's conference in Seattle on Monday, green building leaders debated which path to take. "Do-nothingness equates to a fear of moving forward," said Scot Horst, a Washington, D.C., environmental consultant who owns a second home in Portland, where he frequently works.
At the center of the debate is the council's green building certification program, known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. Certification gives building owners what amounts to a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from the council.
The council has proposed an overhaul of LEED's standards over the next year and a half, which could have repercussions for cities and states that have tied tax incentives and other inducements to the program. For example, the Oregon Department of Energy's Business Energy Tax Credit program is tied to certification, and the city of Portland and Portland Development Commission have credits available for projects that meet LEED standards.
Terry Miller, policy and program coordinator for G/Rated, Portland's green building program, said a rewrite should not make certification more difficult. Even with its recent growth, LEED projects nationwide accounted for only 5 percent of the $200 billion in commercial construction last year.
"In the past, it's been a tool for market transformation -- trying to reach the mainstream builder," Miller said. "It's too early to deviate from that and make it significantly more rigorous and more far-reaching." Miller said he thinks it's too early for the program to require projects to address social equality, such as building in impoverished neighborhoods.
"Going to lose credibility"
"Drawing up new, stricter standards might not play well in corporate boardrooms, either, said Linda McDaid, of Honeywell Building Solutions, a conglomerate that makes fire safety and other building systems.
"If you turn around and change the ship, you're going to lose credibility," McDaid said.
But Ralph DiNola, principal of Portland-based Green Building Services, said some in the movement want to update the program to recognize technological advances since the original standards were written.
"There's another segment that's getting frustrated with the standards," he said.
Horst, chairman of the council's LEED Steering Committee, said the program was always intended to be revised as technology, science and industries evolved.
The program, he said, has always had dual goals: to make green building simple enough to encourage adoption by the entire construction industry and to set a high enough standard to encourage innovation. "That's the tightrope we walk, but it's one that we need to approach with strength," Horst said.
Standards should raise the bar
Dennis Wilde, a senior project manager with Gerding/Edlen Development Co., one of Portland's biggest developers, said LEED standards should raise the bar on sustainability.
"Can we make buildings that produce more energy than they consume?" Wilde said. "Can they consume more waste than they produce? That's where this should be going."
First introduced in 2000, the voluntary certification program requires detailed third-party reviews. There are 69 possible points new construction projects can earn, usually one point each for each environmental feature. Four ratings are available, ranging from "certified" to "platinum," depending on a project's point total.
More recently, the council also adopted separate LEED standards for existing buildings and retail interiors. Standards for neighborhood developments, single-family homes and the "core and shells" of speculative buildings are also in the works.
Aside from the debate over changing the standards, several Portland-area attendees at the conference said they wanted the system to give developers more guidance on how to meet them. Wilde asked whether the new standards could describe a "broader vision" for developers, in addition to the minutiae of energy efficiency goals currently in the point system.
Carol Gardner, president of Portland-based Building Solutions Consultants Inc., said the standards should somehow encourage developers and architects to bring engineers into the early stages of project planning.
By addressing energy in addition to functionality and aesthetics early in project planning -- a process called "integrated design" -- developers can save money by planning for green building features from the beginning, she said. For example, a smaller-size rooftop chiller could require less structural support throughout the building.
Several asked for the council to design the standards for a wider variety of buildings and a wider variety of issues. The standards don't address the special needs of ports and airports and utility buildings, such as water treatment plants. Some expressed dismay that new construction in suburban settings could qualify for LEED, settings that could encourage sprawl and air-polluting automobile use.
The standards may also change to become more user-friendly. Green Building Council officials said they have started a Web-based system that allows developers to send application documents over the Internet. Council staff are more responsive to disputes over project credits, some developers said.
Some asked the council to lobby for the standards to be included in building codes and to work with local code officials on implementation.
Tony Gale, corporate architect for Starbucks Coffee Co., compared LEED to the Americans With Disabilities Act requirements. They were at first considered too expensive and unwieldy, but were recently adopted into international building code requirements.
"Now it's just part of what we consider good architecture," Gale said.
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