[Sustain] Lawsuit Challenges Validity Of LEED 'Green' Building Certification

[Eric Brooks]

http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/citizen/through-prediction-performance-how-do-1/


  Lawsuit Claims Major "Green" Building Certification Makes False Claims
  on Energy Savings
  <http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/citizen/through-prediction-performance-how-do-1/>

By Jim Gunshinan 
<http://www.baycitizen.org/profiles/jim-gunshinan/>|December 17, 2010 
12:31 p.m.

<http://media.baycitizen.org/uploaded/images/2010/12/through-prediction-performance-how-do-we/lightbox/Henry5.jpg> 


Henry Gifford, a mechanical systems designer and principal at Gifford 
Fuel Savings, Inc. <http://www.energysavingscience.com> in New York 
City, is suing the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) 
<http://www.usgbc.org> for millions of dollars. Gifford, in the class 
action suit, claims that the USGBC has committed fraud in the selling of 
its Leadership in Energy Efficient Design (LEED) program, and has 
unfairly kept work away from people like him who are not involved in the 
program. (Photo of Henry by Travis Roozee.)

There is a LEED for New Construction (NC), LEED for Homes, and LEED for 
Existing Buildings (EB), among other certifications. The rub for Gifford 
is that LEED is a very popular and widespread program---some 
municipalities require LEED certification for new city buildings---that 
makes claims about energy efficiency that it can't back up. The claims 
of energy saving attract builders and developers to seek LEED 
certification, and people in architecture firms, building energy 
consultants, and others in the building industry have rushed to become 
LEED approved providers; that means they are able to help builders meet 
the building requirements and fill out the paperwork needed to apply for 
certification. Buildings with LEED certification draw higher rents and 
people with "LEED AP" after their names make money shepherding builders 
through the certification process.

The issue hinges on a study commissioned by the USGBC in 2008. The New 
Buildings Institute (NBI) study compared buildings that are LEED 
certified with similar buildings that are not certified. NBI claims that 
LEED buildings use about 25-30% less energy than conventional buildings. 
But according to Gifford, who examined the data from the study, LEED 
buildings actually use about 29% more energy than conventional 
buildings. Gifford has legitimate concerns about how NBI gathered, 
sorted, and analyzed the study data. For example, the data on LEED 
buildings was submitted by a small percentage of LEED building owners; 
those who take the trouble to keep records and who want to share 
information on how their building performs. In another example, the mean 
energy use of one set of buildings is compared to the median energy use 
of another set, possibly skewing the results in favor of the LEED buildings.

The USGBC counters that they do not guarantee energy savings. They model 
energy use using a software program and only certify that a buildings 
meets its design specification---sustainable wood, recycled steel, 
interior building material that doesn't off-gas noxious chemicals, and 
so on---with predicted energy efficiency only a part of the requirements 
for certification.

Gifford has been a thorn in the side of the USGBC for years. His 
criticism, along with that of others, has pushed the USGBC in the right 
direction. The LEED EB program requires that buildings actually perform; 
that they save as much energy as is predicted through the modeling 
software. USGBC is encouraging LEED NC building owners to take part in 
the LEED EH program; they are also asking LEED NC building owners to 
submit energy-use data that can be used to a study the effectiveness of 
the program. But this is not required for LEED NC certification.

Gifford is afraid that in the future someone will do a thorough study of 
green building performance energy will be so important that we will 
start to measure it," writes Gifford in a recent Press Release. "And I 
predict that when that happens, building energy efficiency will start to 
be measured by building energy use. At that time, the currently popular 
systems based on computer predictions of energy use will be shown to be 
useless, and abandoned."


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