New Concepts

in LEED v4
A LEEDuser special report
Published by BuildingGreen, Inc.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 1

 Authors
Nadav Malin
Paula Melton
Tristan Roberts

Graphic Design
Amie Walter

About BuildingGreen
BuildingGreen combines insight with information, creating knowledge that informs
practice. We provide design and construction professionals with practical insights,
engagement opportunities, and software resources to exceed clients’ energy and
environmental performance expectations.
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information on green building
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and more
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support and a discussion forum

Published by BuildingGreen, Inc., 122 Birge St., Suite 30, Brattleboro, Vermont 05301
©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc.

Cover photo: The Kubala Washatko Architects, Inc./Zane Williams

Rain gardens and other low-intensity rainwater management strategies

virtually eliminated runoff from the previously problematic site of this
project—an addition to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed First Unitarian
Society Meeting House in Madison, Wisconsin.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 2

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

New Concepts in LEED v4 4

Integrative Process 4
Sustainable Sites 6
Rainwater Management 6
Light Pollution Reduction 7
Energy & Atmosphere 8
Building Envelope Commissioning 8
Demand Response 9
Green Power and Carbon Offsets 10
Materials and Resources 12
Whole-building life-cycle assessment 13
Environmental product declarations 14
Multi-attribute optimization 15
Corporate sustainability reporting 15
Biobased raw materials 16
Framework for Responsible Mining 17
Chemicals of concern 17
The Health Product Declaration (HPD) 17
The GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals, from the nonprofit 17
Clean Production Action
Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of 18
Chemicals (REACH)
Cradle to Cradle (C2C) 18
Indoor Environmental Quality 19
Measuring VOCs: Goodbye, 01350 19
Spatial daylight autonomy 20
Acoustic Performance 20
Rolling it Out 22

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 3

 New Concepts in LEED v4
Past versions of LEED have helped make FSC and other
concepts practically household terms. Where is LEED v4
taking the green building conversation next?

Energy modeling, commissioning, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)—since the

first building projects became LEED-certified in 2000, concepts like these have gone
from niche interests to being used on tens of thousands of building projects world-
wide. While larger trends are also responsible, widespread adoption of the LEED
rating systems from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has arguably been the
biggest driver.

But why stand still? After a primarily structural upgrade to LEED in 2009, USGBC is
trying to convince the building industry that it’s time to push ahead with more
innovative concepts in greening our buildings, even as it continues to fine-tune the
bedrock LEED requirements. It has been a tough sell: after four public comment
drafts, USGBC scrapped plans for launching LEED 2012, pushing a planned member
ballot on the system back to 2013 and renaming it LEED v4. See page 22 for more
on how USGBC hopes to roll out LEED v4 over the next year.

LEED v4 is introducing a number of programs, terms, and concepts that are likely
to be unfamiliar even to the most LEED-savvy professionals: BUG ratings, LID infra-
structure, BECx, and spatial daylight autonomy are a few of the more esoteric terms.
We combed through LEED v4 for concepts that we felt we should know more about,
and in this article we elucidate the key LEED v4 concepts most likely to shape the
industry for years to come. In analyzing the impact on credit requirements, our focus
is on LEED Building Design & Construction (BD&C) rating systems, but most of these
concepts crop up across all of LEED.

Integrative Process
The new Integrative Process credit is essentially a codification of certain aspects of in-
tegrative design. The credit’s authors prefer the term “integrative” because ‘integrated’
connotes that you’re done,” says John Boecker, principal at 7group, who led an effort
to write the credit. “’Integrative’ has a more powerful meaning; it connotes that it’s an
ongoing process involving all systems of the building, of those who use it, and those
that it’s a part of.”

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 4

 HOK’s “advanced
collaboration rooms”
use high-definition video
conferencing and virtual
whiteboard technology to

Photo: HOK
make long-distance
meetings more effective.

The process defined in this credit requires project teams to analyze their oppor-
tunities early in design, before many choices have been made and cost-effective
options eliminated. It focuses on energy and water specifically, with a list of
interdisciplinary explorations for the team to pursue. The goal is to uncover op-
portunities that might be missed in a more traditional process.
For example, the credit requires that teams consider and run analyses on two or
more options for massing and orientation, envelope parameters (such as insula-
tion levels, window-to-wall ratios, or glazing specifications), and lighting levels,
among many others, to assess the impact of each of those options on HVAC
sizing, energy use, and occupant performance.
In addition to structuring the process, the Integrative Process requirements tie
this early design exercise into the commissioning process that carries through
design and construction and into the occupancy phase. It does that by leverag-
ing two documents, the Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR) and Basis of Design
(BOD), which are embedded in every LEED BD&C project as part of the commis-
sioning requirements. Documentation requirements are currently being clarified,
according to Boecker, with the goal of minimizing any unnecessary work. “If they
are actually integrating, the documentation should be a breeze,” Boecker says.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 5

Photo: Schrickel, Rollins and Associates, Inc.

The Green at College Park of the University of

Texas–Arlington transformed a parking lot with
drainage problems into a pedestrian promenade
and rain gardens that protect a nearby creek
from flooding.

Sustainable Sites
Borrowing a page from LEED for Neighborhood Development and LEED for Homes,
the BD&C rating systems in LEED v4 have a new category, Location and Transporta-
tion, to address larger-scale land-use issues. That change allows the Sustainable
Sites (SS) category to focus on issues specific to the project site. SS credits with new
concepts are Rainwater Management and Light Pollution Reduction.

Rainwater Management
To the average LEED user, the rainwater management language in LEED v4 may
simply look like a new set of engineering jargon that describes already-familiar ideas.
However, to Amy Rider, a hydrology expert with DNV KEMA Energy & Sustainability,
it’s an evolutionary step for the field, with an “underlying intent to do right by nature.”
The credit title says it all: rainwater is a natural phenomenon and a natural resource.
New credit requirements to manage the “95th percentile of regional or local rainfall
events” direct LEED projects to address rain consistently throughout the year. In con-
trast, “stormwater management” (the old LEED term) put an emphasis on managing
the statistically worst storms that might occur in a year.
The low-impact development (LID) tools referenced in LEED v4 “are much more about
mimicking pre-development hydrology than managing off-site flows,” says Rider.
For example, rain gardens would be preferred over swales under LID, she says. In
engineering a rain garden, there is more attention to managing the soil structure to
encourage infiltration of water. “In a swale, you’re just messing with the topography,”
says Rider. A swale is more of a channel that leads the water in a linear direction while
hoping that some of it infiltrates, but ultimately much of the water may flow off-site.
When compared with conventional stormwater management, LID has many subtle
differences like this, says Rider. While most projects should already be working with
a civil engineer to achieve stormwater management objectives, Rider argues, the
emphasis on LID, with more of a technical component related to site hydrology and
calculating soil characteristics, will push this credit even further into the lap of an
engineer—one who has LID expertise.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 6


Light pollution may be more
literal than previously thought:
leaving the lights on prevents
nighttime chemical reactions
that normally clean the air.
Image: International Dark-Sky Association
The BUG system (for backlight,
uplight, and glare) uses
subdivided zones around out-
door luminaires to provide a
standard system for measuring
and reporting fixture data for
compliance with light pollution
restrictions.
New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved.
Photo: International Dark-Sky Association
Light Pollution Reduction
Light Pollution Reduction in LEED v4 offers two options: the BUG Rating
Method and the Calculation Method, which are basically a prescriptive and a
performance path, respectively, according to Bill Swanson, P.E., of Integrated
Architecture.
LEED v4’s prescriptive option uses the new Illuminating Engineering Society of
North America (IES) TM-15 -11 “BUG” classification of outdoor lighting fixtures;
the acronym stands for Backlight, Uplight, and Glare. Designers using this option
will be looking through light fixture specifications for “BUG ratings” that match
their lighting zone. For example, in LZ2 (Lighting Zone 2), the BUG rating “B2 U0
G2” is near the midpoint on a scale of 0 to 4. Allowed backlight and glare ratings
depend on the project’s lighting zone and the fixture’s distance from the prop-
erty line. The uplight rating can’t be higher than the project’s LZ zone—so, for
example, zero uplight is allowed in the most sensitive zone, LZ0.
The performance option looks a lot like the LEED 2009 version: project teams will
have to reference their lighting zone (rural versus urban) and then meet uplight
and light trespass targets accordingly. But this option now draws on the Model
Lighting Ordinance, or MLO, which was developed by the International Dark
Sky Association (IDA) along with IES. The MLO is a tool for helping municipalities
reduce glare, light trespass, and skyglow. With stringency designed to be fine-
tuned according to local sensitivities, the MLO offers an easily adopted overlay of
existing codes.
According to Swanson, the LEED v4 draft language is much more effective than
LEED 2009’s “because they lowered the allowed wattage dramatically, and this
has reduced reflective light off the pavement.” He also gives high marks for the
effort made to align with the MLO and ASHRAE 189.1 but says, “It is far from
easy to document: try drawing a vertical calculation grid around a curved street
centerline, or constantly looking up the BUG rating for each option selected on
a light fixture.” Swanson predicts that “The performance option is doomed by
complexity, and most people will use the BUG option.”
7
 Energy & Atmosphere
Key prerequisites and credits in this category—energy performance, commis-
sioning, refrigerant management—remain fundamentally unchanged. A new
energy-metering prerequisite creates the foundation for more robust ongoing
measurement of performance. Other credits introduce some brand-new
concepts, however.

Building Envelope Commissioning

While the evolution of LEED v4 throughout the public comment process has
pushed this requirement out of the commissioning prerequisite, building enve-
lope commissioning (also known as building enclosure commissioning, BECx,
or ECx) is still in the Enhanced Commissioning credit.
According to the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), BECx is “utilized
to validate that the performance of materials, components, assemblies, systems,
and design achieve the objectives and requirements of the owner as outlined
in the contract documents.” As with other types of commissioning, the commis-
sioning agent should ideally be involved throughout the design and construc-
tion process and may conduct a variety of activities—from reviewing enclosure
design against the owner’s objectives to observing construction, performing
field testing, completing checklists, and verifying corrective actions. So far, the
LEED BECx requirements are fairly vague, and it does not appear likely that any
field-testing will be required.
“It’s long overdue that it get incorporated into LEED,” says Marcus Sheffer, a long-
time LEED technical committee volunteer and founder of Energy Opportunities,
Inc. “I’m sure everyone has heard envelope horror stories”—façades falling off
due to unexpected moisture migration, unpressur-
ized underfloor air plenums due to poor detailing
with the envelope, and more. The building enve-
lope can play a much bigger role than mechanical
systems in determining the longevity and energy
efficiency of a building, and commissioning those
systems is already a standard LEED requirement.
One controversy with the BECx requirement—
although it has died down since BECx was removed
from the prerequisite—is added cost. Some
Photo: Terry Brennan

observers have predicted that commissioning costs

will go through the roof for LEED projects. Sheffer
downplays this, saying that cost issues are nothing
new. “We’ve seen huge price differentials between
A long gap between the roof and upper wall joint in
the low-cost commodity BECx providers and people
this building showed up clearly on an infrared photo.
that do it right,” he says. “The low-cost types will
While this photo was taken as part of a diagnostic
figure out how to do it cheaply,” Sheffer says. Those
effort well after occupancy, building envelope
willing to pay more hopefully understand the value
commissioning can head off potentially huge energy
they are getting.
and moisture problems like this one.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 8

 Scott Bowman, corporate sustainability leader at KJWW Engineering Consul-
tants, argues that a well-written LEED Reference Guide will go a long way toward
ensuring that all projects get good value from BECx. “We have to compete with
very low-scope, low-cost providers,” he said on a LEEDuser discussion board,
“and I have seen little enforcement from GBCI [the Green Building Certification
Institute, which certifies LEED projects] on commissioning.”

Demand Response
Demand-response programs are nothing new for manufacturing facilities with
large loads; they’ve long had the opportunity, at least in some service territo-
ries, to reduce their energy cost by giving the utility the right to cut back on the
power they can use during peak demand times. New technology and policies are
now bringing that opportunity to commercial office buildings as well. These pro-
grams help avoid the need to build new power plants or to fire up less-efficient
plants that are used only during peak demand times.
Traditionally, demand-reduction programs were manually controlled. The man-
ager of a factory would get a call from the utility asking the factory to cut back
on its power draw, and the manager would respond by turning equipment off
or slowing it down. Newer, automated programs put the control of chillers and
lighting in a building directly in the hands of the utility. Up to an agreed-upon
limit, they can dim the lights or cut back the chiller remotely.

Photos: Alex Wilson

The Cook+Fox-designed Bank of America Tower in New York City

includes a sophisticated combination of onsite cogeneration,
ice storage, and automated chiller controls to manage energy use.
The Durst Organization, which manages the building, participates in
several demand-response programs through local utility Con Edison.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 9

 LEED has a long history of paying attention to how buildings fit into their sur-
rounding infrastructure when it comes to location, transportation, and waste-
water, says Brendan Owens, P.E., vice president for LEED technical development
at USGBC. But in terms of energy, LEED has until now treated buildings as
isolated entities. The Demand Response credit changes that by encouraging
two-way communication between buildings and electric utilities, supporting
sophisticated load management on both sides of the meter. These capabilities
are especially important as more renewable energy sources come online, with
their potentially inconsistent output.
Demand-response programs come in various flavors. Some utilities pay the
customer a retainer just for the right to cut back on their power, regardless of
whether that right is exercised. Others pay by the demand-reduction event. The
LEED credit provides two points for projects that enroll in a program allowing the
utility to curtail at least 10% of their peak demand. If the project is in a service
territory that doesn’t offer a demand-response program, it can still garner one
point by installing the technology and having the procedures in place to partici-
pate if and when it does become available. In both cases, the demand-response
technology has to be included in the building’s commissioning scope of work.
“LEED buildings are typically first adopters of new technologies,” says Rebecca
Schlanert, principal consultant at the energy consulting firm Skipping Stone,
“and approximately one-third of the power grid load in the U.S. is attributed to
commercial buildings.” That’s why the electric power industry is interested in
getting LEED to help promote these opportunities.

Green Power and Carbon Offsets

Thanks to carbon offsets that are now widely available with airline tickets,
building products, and a host of other purchases, many people are familiar with
the idea that they can pay an extra fee to fund projects like tree-planting and
landfill-gas reclamation that in theory mitigate or offset the same amount of
carbon their activities just emitted. Although the same idea has been a part of
LEED for years with green power, or renewable energy credits (RECs), certified
carbon offsets are finally set to become a part of all the LEED rating systems with
LEED v4.
Photo: Bonneville Environmental Foundation

This building in Portland, Oregon, uses

an integrated 30kw photovoltaic system
to produce carbon offsets, which are
certified by Green-e Climate and sold by
Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 10

 The Bear Creek Wind Farm in

Photo: Community Energy, Inc.

Bear Creek, Pennsylvania, with
12 Garnesa 2 MW turbines,
was developed in 2005 by
Community Energy, which sells
renewable energy credits
(RECs) from the project.

Projects will have to include all energy use in their offset calculations—not just
electricity use, which can still be offset with RECs. Sheffer says that, while this
idea has been around for years, “there has been a lot of uncertainty relative to
the quality of offsets available, and there wasn’t a definitive set of standards.” The
draft LEED language references the Green-e Climate Standard for carbon offsets,
to go along with the Green-e Energy Standard for RECs.
Green-e Climate, from the Center for Resource Solutions, was first to focus on the
voluntary rather than the regulated market and to provide a product label from
an established brand supported by a published
standard. That standard addresses knotty
issues like additionality, the concept that the
purchase of a carbon offset should help fund
projects that wouldn’t have already happened under “business as usual” without
that funding (see “Carbon Offsets Get Oversight,” Environmental Building News
Apr. 2008).

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 11

 Materials and Resources
Entirely new approaches affecting most of the Materials and Resources (MR)
category of LEED v4 are the most controversial, and some have seen significant
changes several times throughout the development process. Although details
could change again, the current draft includes key new concepts and terms that
are likely to remain in one form or another.
The still-settling nature of the MR credits is reflected in new language appearing
in the fifth public comment draft, which intentionally leaves some loose ends
hanging. For example, the first option under the Environmental Product Decla-
rations credit lists three types of reports that may be used, then adds a fourth
option: any USGBC-approved program.
This open-endedness simply makes explicit “how the rating system has always
worked,” says Sara Cederberg, LEED manager at USGBC; credit interpretations
and minor amendments have always been added regularly, and this option of-
fers an explicit signal to the market to expect that, and even to help drive market
transformation. “A lot of these markets are new and still under development,”
she told LEEDuser. “So it’s especially important to note that this is an ongoing
process. We’ll be adding [new programs] to the rating system, and we won’t have
to wait for the next full development cycle to revise the credit. We want to leave
that door open.”
Perhaps the most novel and confusing MR incentives come up in three new two-
part credits—all covering Building Product Disclosure and Optimization—which
offer points for publishing environmental impacts (even if the impacts are heavy)
and product ingredients (even if the ingredients are harmful). This has been a
difficult shift in mindset for many in the green building community, but USGBC
insists it’s a necessary one, for two reasons. First, says Brendan Owens, creating
market demand for transparency will “lead to product optimization” because
manufacturers will not want to embarrass themselves in the marketplace; and
second, transparency is really in its infancy, and Owens believes LEED can help
“create a data stream on which better tools can be built”—tools that can more
accurately measure and express the true environmental and human health costs
of building materials and products.
Toward that end, the three new Building Product Disclosure and Optimization
credits are structured to incentivize transparency as Option 1 and performance
as Option 2. Depending on the products chosen, project teams may get points
for both.
Additionally, in the fifth public comment draft, the “disclosure” option has been
decoupled from cost and is instead tied to the number of products and product
manufacturers meeting the reporting requirements for each credit. Cederberg
explains: “It’s about getting more information. We wanted not to focus on the
most expensive items but to really make it so that more manufacturers can enter
the rating system, no matter how big or small.”

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 12

 Whole-building life-cycle assessment
One of the more ambitious new credit options introduced in LEED v4 is the op-
tion under “Building Life-Cycle Impact Reduction” for whole-building life-cycle
assessment (LCA). This option allows new buildings to garner three points in
a credit that also offers points for reusing existing buildings and/or salvaged
materials.
The impact of materials has typically been viewed as relatively small compared
with operational impacts, but as buildings get more efficient and the urgency of
addressing climate change grows, the initial burst of energy and resources that
go into constructing a building looms larger. In very large and complex build-
ings, structural engineers go to great lengths to analyze and optimize the materi-
als needed to keep the building standing. More modest buildings don’t often get
that kind of attention, however, and this credit is intended to reward those that do.
This credit option works somewhat like the energy optimization credit, in that
users have to model both a base case and a design case of their project and
show that the design case is better. The models are limited to the building’s
structure and enclosure, excluding sitework and interior finishes. The base case,
or “reference model,” is supposed to reflect typical construction practices for
buildings of that type, size, and location.
Unlike the energy modeling credit, however, which re-
wards points based on just one result (energy cost), the
LCA credit considers impacts in six distinct categories:
1. Global warming
2. Ozone-layer depletion
3. Acidification
4. Eutrophication
5. Formation of ground-level ozone
6. Depletion of non-renewable energy resources
To earn the three points, the design has to be at least
10% better (lower-impact) than the reference case in
the global warming category and two others, and it
cannot be more than 5% worse than the reference case
in any of the categories. The entire building life cycle is
included in the analysis, including extraction and manu-
facturing of the materials, operation of the building,
and disposal of the materials at the end of the building’s
life. Operational impacts such as energy use must be
Photo: SOM

the same in both the reference case and design case,

The diagonal bracing on this tower designed
by SOM in China reduces material use—
optimization that could be rewarded under LEED's
proposed whole-building LCA credit.
however, so they can’t be used to contribute to the 10%
improvements.
Currently, there is only one software package widely
available to project teams in North America to run this
analysis: the Athena Impact Estimator from the Athena

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 13

 Design firm Perkins+Will has
developed the Transparency
label as an example of
how EPD information might
Image: Perkins+Will

be displayed in a digestible,
on-product format—much
like the nutrition label on a
cereal box.

Sustainable Materials Institute. With version 4.2, released in September 2012, this
tool is available free to users. Alternatively, teams can hire a trained LCA practi-
tioner to run these analyses using more sophisticated LCA tools, such as GaBi or
SimaPro. (The other LCA software package that may be familiar to North Ameri-
can designers, BEES, only deals with individual products.)
Given the range of uncertainties in LCA data and the difficulty of enforcing use
of a fair reference case, the ecological benefit of projects that score 10% higher
in certain categories is questionable. By introducing project teams to this kind
of analysis, however, LEED may well be stimulating choices that wouldn’t other-
wise have been considered. Just as the energy modeling requirements in LEED
have brought mechanical engineers into the design process in a more integrated
manner, USGBC hopes that this credit will do the same for structural engineers.

Environmental product declarations

Environmental product declarations, or EPDs, are relatively new to the industry,
but they could take off rapidly under a new credit called Building Product Disclo-
sure and Optimization—Environmental Product Declarations.
An EPD reports a handful of environmental impacts, such as greenhouse gas
emissions and smog-forming potential, that result from product manufacturing,
use, and disposal; it summarizes a much longer LCA report. In order to count for
full credit in LEED, a product’s EPD has to follow a certain process and reporting
format laid out in a panoply of ISO standards and has to be certified by a third
party. Some LCAs can also be used for this credit (those created according to ISO
standard 14044), as can generic EPDs for a whole class of materials, but you only
get a fraction of the credit for those products.
With little burden on project teams, these could be very easy and inexpensive
points to achieve, so it’s likely that designers and contractors will be calling
manufacturers to request EPDs for their favorite products; right now, says USGBC,
the idea is to jump-start transparency by getting more manufacturers to produce
the reports.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 14

 The ultimate goal is to encourage better environmental performance, something
USGBC believes you can do only if you start with reliable data, and lots of it. After
more manufacturers release this data, project teams will be able to use EPDs to
make informed choices about things like embodied carbon, energy, and water.
It’s important to note, though, that EPDs are imperfect—one reason the rating
system uses credits like Sourcing of Raw Materials to “deal with blind spots,”
according to Owens. (For a deeper look at the strengths and weaknesses of EPDs,
see “The Product Transparency Movement,” Environmental Building News Jan. 2012.)

Multi-attribute optimization
The EPD credit’s second option, “multi-attribute optimization,” opens the door
for products with certain multi-attribute environmental certifications to count
toward credit. For products to qualify, manufacturers will need to demonstrate
that the product’s impacts are below the industry average in at least three of six
impact areas typically considered in an EPD, including global warming potential,
smog formation potential, and depletion of nonrenewable resources. However,
the credit draft does not currently reference any specific certification programs.
Cederberg said USGBC has already gotten an earful about this option, and she
tried to clarify its intent. The hope, she says, “is that certifications like BIFMA level
[for furniture] or NSF-140 [for carpeting] will start to base their datasets on EPDs”
so that all the certification systems are more likely to harmonize. “We are setting
up a working group over the next year to work with people developing these
programs,” she said, affirming that, to her knowledge, there are no multi-attri-
bute programs that currently get their data from EPDs.
Option 2 in the EPD credit also encourages “extended producer responsibility”—
which typically indicates product manufacturing that uses a closed-loop
recycling program. This means the manufacturer takes back materials from
construction or demolition waste and uses the waste to make more of the same
product (rather than disposing of it or “down-cycling” it into a less useful or
lower-quality product).
As with all the “reporting and optimization” credits, this one offers extra incen-
tives for local sourcing of qualifying materials.

Corporate sustainability reporting

Building Product Disclosure and Optimization—Sourcing of Raw Materials gives
new prominence to corporate sustainability reporting that includes certain
information about land use, extraction and manufacturing impacts, and social
responsibility. To count for full credit, the report must be verified by a third party.
Corporate sustainability reporting is a voluntary but well-established system
used by many large corporations. Reporting typically happens within a standard-
ized framework developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), but the credit
offers other options as well.
Within GRI’s framework, there are two levels of verification, according to GRI’s
Marjella Alma. GRI does an “application-level check” and gives the report a grade

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 15

 of A, B, or C based on the level of transparency and ease of finding informa-
tion. “External assurance”—the third-party verification required for full credit in
LEED—is optional but earns companies a “+” from GRI if they do it; this level of
review includes data validation, Alma explained. “If the report is assured, you
have a better view of data quality and credibility,” she said, adding that in the
U.S., “there are quite a number of companies that use the framework but don’t
publish the data.” There is potential for LEED to change that—at least for building
product manufacturers—with enough market pressure.

Biobased raw materials

The “optimization” option under Building Product Disclosure and Optimiza-
tion—Sourcing of Raw Materials (called “Leadership Extraction Practices”) also
creates new incentives to use biobased building products. But “biobased” might
describe anything from undyed wool to highly processed corn- or soy-based
plastics, and the impacts of many biobased materials can exceed those of the
fossil-fuel materials they replace (see “Biobased Materials: Not Always Greener,”
Environmental Building News May 2012). This credit attempts to address grow-
ing and harvesting practices by requiring certain guarantees of environmental
performance—the most familiar one being FSC certification for wood products.
Non-forestry materials would have to be certified to the Sustainable Agriculture
Network (SAN) standard, which is similar to FSC in scope but instead covers
crops. According to Conrado Guinea, certification systems coordinator at SAN,
the main goals of the certification are to provide fair working conditions, prevent
the use of certain pesticides, and protect wildlife and natural ecosystems. SAN
has close ties to the Rainforest Alliance and has historically focused on Central
and South America; the only North American farm currently participating in this
system is a coffee plantation in Hawaii. In the same way that it elevated FSC’s
profile by including it in LEED, USGBC is hoping that SAN will be more widely

Photo: Rainforest Alliance

Conventional sugarcane harvesting starts with burning the fields to remove excess
plant matter—a major source of pollution in areas where sugarcane is grown.
To qualify for Sustainable Agriculture Network certification, farms must use alternative
harvesting practices.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 16

 adopted so that projects won’t have to look to imports to earn this credit. (The
credit also provides extra incentives for local and domestic sourcing).
To qualify toward LEED points, products must also be tested using ASTM Test
Method D6866, which measures total biobased content. If you want to use a
“biobased” spray polyurethane foam that turns out to be only 2% soy, you only
get to count that 2%.
As with all the “reporting and optimization” credits, this one offers extra incen-
tives for local sourcing of qualifying materials. It no longer offers credit for local
sourcing alone.

Framework for Responsible Mining

This credit at one time included the Framework for Responsible Mining;
although this program is no longer referenced in the fifth public comment draft,
the language leaves open the option to add “other programs for other material
types.” We hope to be able to reference them in the near future, but at this time
we only want to reference established, credible programs,” said Sara Cederberg,
LEED manager at USGBC. She added that the program was in a pilot phase but
would likely be fully available in 2013.

Chemicals of concern
Both options under Building Product Disclosure and Optimization—Material
Ingredients are based on lists of potentially hazardous ingredients. At the
reporting level, relatively large lists are cited to identify any ingredients whose
presence has to be disclosed. The optimization option cites more targeted
lists and rewards projects that avoid those ingredients for a certain fraction of
their products. As with all the “reporting and optimization” credits, this one offers
extra incentives for local sourcing of qualifying materials.
The fifth public comment draft cites the following sources for this credit.

The Health Product Declaration (HPD)

The HPD was pilot-tested in spring 2012 and formally launched by the
newly formed Health Product Declaration Collaborative in November 2012.
The HPD Open Standard enables transparent disclosure by defining the
information that manufacturers should present so that fair comparisons can
be made. “Full” disclosure of ingredients means different things to different
people; the HPD Open Standard requires that manufacturers explicitly state
the level of ingredient disclosure and provide a hazard profile for 100% of
ingredients—even ingredients that aren’t identified.

The GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals, from the nonprofit Clean

Production Action
Based on large experimental datasets and regulatory red lists from around
the globe, the GreenScreen divides chemicals into four “benchmarks,” the

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 17

 Image: Health Product Declaration Collaborative
The health product
declaration provides a format
for voluntarily disclosing
product contents. Inclusion
in LEED will boost this
brand new program, giving
manufacturers an incentive
to participate.

most hazardous being Benchmark 1; most of these are persistent, bioaccu-

mulative toxic chemicals or known human carcinogens, but newer chemi-
cals may receive this benchmark if they have characteristics similar to those
of known hazards and chemical producers have not done research that
shows them to be safer.

Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals

(REACH)
The European Union’s REACH legislation is a broad mandate for all chemi-
cals sold in quantity in the EU to be registered in a central database and
prioritized for evaluation and possible restriction based on their hazard
profile. The program maintains several lists of substances it has identified for
attention, most notably the “Authorization List” (chemicals that can only be
used with special authorization) and the “Candidate List” (chemicals being
considered for the Authorization List). The optimization option in the new
Material Ingredients credit offers full credit for products that have no REACH
substances of very high concern, with multipliers if products also have no
ingredients on the Authorization or Candidate lists.

Cradle to Cradle (C2C)

Originally developed by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, C2C
is now managed by the nonprofit Cradle-to-Cradle Certification Institute.
C2C certifies that products meet the program’s requirements for “material
health,” which are quite stringent at the higher levels of certification, along
with other criteria. It does not require any public disclosure of ingredients.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 18

 Indoor Environmental Quality
The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) credits have seen major changes in
LEED v4, with a general shift toward more sophisticated modeling tools and
more performance testing and monitoring.

Measuring VOCs: Goodbye, 01350

Low-Emitting Interiors, while not new, has changed significantly. Three separate
credits from LEED 2009 have been combined into one, and the credit for no
added urea-formaldehyde in some materials has been eliminated. Now, all
indoor materials have to be tested by manufacturers for VOC emissions (how
much offgases from the product over time), while wet-applied materials like
paints and adhesives have to be tested for both emissions and VOC content
(what’s actually in the can).
That brings us to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Standard
Method v1.1–2010, which LEED v4 is referencing. In a nutshell, the CDPH Stan-
dard Method is a test method for VOC emissions—and as the most stringent
such method that is widely adopted in the industry, it’s a step up in toughness
for LEED. While the name of this method isn’t very catchy, you’re more likely
to have heard of programs that reference the method: FloorScore, GreenLabel
Plus, and Greenguard Children & Schools are three. (You may have also heard
of California Section 01350, which is another shorthand for the same program.
Section 01 35 00 is one part of a State of California green building standard, and
it actually includes a variety of indoor air quality specifications in addition to the
CDPH Standard Method.)

Chair in a mid-sized
emissions-testing chamber
at Air Quality Sciences lab. Photo: Courtesy Greenguard Environmental Institute

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 19

 Roof monitors in the atrium of
Rendering: Jill Dalglish, Dalglish Daylighting

the History Colorado Center

will allow expansive views of
the sky while minimizing direct
sunlight. The space will be
protected from excessive glare
and solar heat gain by architec-
tural features, exterior shading
elements, and fritted glass.

Spatial daylight autonomy

LEED v4 updates the daylighting credit to reflect innovations in daylight model-
ing. While simple illuminance calculations at key points during the year can still be
used, the credit now gives the most points for a more sophisticated and dynamic
metric called spatial daylight autonomy, or sDA—the percentage of the “work
plane” that is above 300 lux (28 footcandles) at least 50% of the time during
occupied hours over the course of a whole year. Because this metric alone might
encourage overglazing, the credit also requires glare simulations (in the form of
annual sunlight exposure, or ASE) as a counterpoint. (For more information on
the state of the art in daylighting, see “Doing Daylighting Right,” Environmental
Building News Apr. 2012.)

Acoustic Performance
With the trend toward open work areas still gaining momentum (see “Open
Offices Engender Collaborative, Transparent Workspaces,” Environmental Building
News Oct. 2011), acoustics are a growing concern in commercial buildings. Long
a prerequisite in LEED for Schools, Acoustic Performance has now been adopted
across the BD&C LEED v4 drafts as a credit.
The credit focuses on a few performance features:
• n
 oise levels, especially those caused by HVAC systems, as calculated during
design or measured after construction
• s ound isolation between spaces, determined by looking at the sound
transmission class (STC) ratings of building materials and assemblies
• r everberation time and reverberation noise build-up, two ways of express-
ing whether sounds in a space echo or get absorbed
• s ound reinforcement and masking, two ways of improving the acoustics in
a larger spaces so that sounds are easier to hear (reinforcement) or more
readily absorbed (masking)

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 20

 Photo: Barry Halkin Photography
Acoustic performance requires a different approach for different spaces. In the cafeteria
of the SMP Architects-designed Kensington High School for the Creative and Performing
Arts, some sound masking was needed to dampen noise from the elevated train;
acoustic ceiling tiles and long, thin layouts were among the strategies used. In contrast,
the theater was designed to provide performance-grade acoustics.

Although the concepts may be new to some project teams, the implementation
need not be tricky or expensive, says Jane Rath, AIA, principal at Philadelphia-
based SMP Architects. Rath served as project architect for the Kensington High
School for the Creative and Performing Arts. “There were, to say the least, huge
challenges because the site is right next to the elevated train, and it’s incredibly
noisy,” she told LEEDuser. The design team wondered how they could ever make
a quiet school, but they found that energy efficiency helped a lot on its own:
“Once we got the windows in and caulked everything and sealed everything,”
she said, all the thermal efficiency measures “helped damp that noise from the
train.”
But don’t rely on that alone, and don’t wait till the last minute, she warns: acous-
tic performance starts with the site assessment and is integral to the design. For
the Kensington project, the classroom wing was sited farthest from the train, and
heat pump units each have their own separate closets that open onto hallways
instead of into classrooms. The Kensington project does include some acousti-
cal materials, but early design choices minimized the need for them; if you don’t
start early, you could end up buying lots of expensive materials to make up for it.
“I actually think that acoustic issues are going to become more important,”
says Rath. In addition to a greater focus on occupant comfort and productivity,
“people’s hearing is getting worse. A lot of kids are having hearing loss at really
young ages because of the really loud music they listen to through ear buds.”

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 21

 Rolling It Out
USGBC is optimistic that the fifth public comment period, scheduled to run
through December 10, 2012, will be the last, leading to a member ballot in June
2013. Assuming the ballot is approved, LEED v4 will become available to project
teams sometime in the late summer or fall of 2013. To assuage concerns about
how much is changing in LEED, however, USGBC has promised that LEED 2009
will also remain available for new registrations until June 2015.
USGBC is also working to set up a beta test of LEED v4 with high-volume users,
beginning before the member ballot. This test is not intended to validate the
credit requirements, which USGBC expects will be finalized by then, but rather to
test and refine supporting materials, such as the Reference Guides and the LEED
Online credit forms that are used to document compliance. The beta test will also
give participants a chance to get some experience with the new requirements
before committing to using them on new projects. Support from those users will
be critical if LEED is to repeat its initial success by introducing yet another set of
advanced green building practices to the building industry.

For more information:

U.S. Green Building Council
www.usgbc.org

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 22

 Continuing Education
Continuing education credits are available to subscribers of Environmental
Building News or BuildingGreen Suite for reading this report.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has approved this course for 1 HSW/
SD Learning Units. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has approved the
technical and instructional quality of this course for 1 GBCI CE hours toward
the LEED Credential Maintenance Program.
This course has several learning objectives. Upon completing this course,
participants will be able to:
• Recognize the ways in which the Integrative Process credit requires teams
to analyze opportunities early in design.
• Describe how the new Location and Transportation category allows the
Sustainable Sites category to focus on issues specific to the project site,
including the concepts of Rainwater Management and Light Pollution
Reduction.
• List and describe the new concepts in Energy & Atmosphere and IEQ.
• Explain why the new Materials and Resources approaches are controversial.
To take the quiz to earn your CE units, log in at:
www.BuildingGreen.com/v4course
If you are not yet a subscriber, you can join for as little as $12.95 for one month
and gain access to dozens of continuing education options.

New Concepts in LEED v4 ©2012 BuildingGreen, Inc. All rights reserved. 23

 New Concepts
in LEED v4
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