building rating systems - henry gifford

8/22/2019 Building Rating Systems - Henry Gifford

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1 by: Henry Gifford www.henrygifford.com

A Better Way to Rate Green Buildings By Henry Gifford

LEED sets the standard for green buildings, but do green buildings actually save any energy?

Thanks to the publics increasingconcern for the environment, one of themost desirable features a new building canhave these days is to be green. So manypeople want to live and work inenvironmentally friendly buildings thatdevelopers are able to charge a premium forthem.

However, exactly what is meant by

green is not easily defined. Thepromotional materials for green buildingsmight list features such as recycled and orless toxic materials, water saving systems,and planted roofs. Energy savingtechnologies are usually included, which caninclude energy efficient appliances, lighting,and heating and cooling equipment. As thelists of features have gotten longer, andharder for consumers to sort out, ratingsystems have been developed.

Many green building ratingsystems exist in the US, and more arebeing created all the time, but the greenbuilding rating system that has come todominate is the US Green BuildingCouncils (USGBC) LEED program,which stands for Leadership in Energyand Environmental Design. LEED hasprobably contributed more to the currentpopularity of green buildings in thepublics eye than anything else. It is

such a valuable selling point that it isfeatured prominently in advertisementsfor buildings that achieve it. LEEDcertified buildings make headlines,attract tenants

1, and command higher

prices.2LEED has attracted all this

attention despite the fact that a relatively

small number of certified buildings haveactually been built, but the growth in thenumber of buildings seeking certification isrising exponentially. As of October 2007only 336 new houses had been certified, butover 8,000 more had applied forcertification

3. Several state and local

governments in the US are either stronglyencouraging or requiring LEED certification

for new buildings, and even the US Armyrequires LEED certification for some of itsnew housing4.

The LEED system has changed themarket for environmentally friendlybuildings in the US, but there is anenormous problem: the best data availableshows that on average, they use more energythan comparable buildings. What has beencreated is the image of energy efficientbuildings, but not actual energy efficiency.


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Part of the problem may reside in thesystems roots. The USGBC, which createdthe LEED system, was founded in 1993 byDavid Gottfried, a real estate developer, andRick Fedrizzi, who was a marketingexecutive for an air conditioning company56.While the organizations name implies it is agroup of independent environmental experts,membership is open to all, and includes thelargest players in the construction industry.The USGBC is really the construction

industry telling itself what it ought to do.Still, the system has accomplished somenotable goals.

Before the LEED system existed, acompany trying to sell a constructionmaterial made from recycled waste orcontaining fewer toxic chemicals had anuphill battle, especially if their product costextra or required a change in constructionpractice. People making a choice betweensaving money and helping the environmentwere largely isolated, and got littlerecognition for helping the environment.The USGBC helped change this situation.

As quoted in FastCompany, RickFedrizzi, the current chairman of theUSGBC, said "We realized we were gettingthe messaging wrong, leading with theenvironmental story," he says. "We had tolead with the business case."

7This approach

has worked wonders for gettingenvironmentally friendly products into themarketplace.

By participating in the USGBC,manufacturers of environmentally friendlyproducts have helped achieve publicrecognition for them, while designers andbuilders have achieved recognition forchoosing to use them. This has been a win-win-win arrangement for companies

manufacturing environmentally friendlyproducts, for the public, and for theenvironment.

But, buildings actually use about71% of the electricity

8and about 40%

9of all

the energy used in the US, far more than thewhole transportation sector, which uses only29%.

10Drastic reductions in energy use

have been achieved by many buildings inthe US and elsewhere, and of course abuilding has to be energy efficient to betruly environmentally friendly.

For many years, the USGBC claimedthat green buildings saved energy1112. But,incredibly, the LEED certification processfor new buildings does not require energy

use to be reported, or even kept track of!

13

So nobody knew until recently how muchenergy LEED buildings used. Finally, afteryears of people asking questions, theUSGBC commissioned the New BuildingsInstitute of Vancouver, Washington, toconduct the first broad study of how muchenergy LEED rated buildings actuallyused

14. The results were announced in

November 2007 at Greenbuild, theUSGBCs annual gathering.

At the long awaited announcement,Brendan Owens, the technical director of theUSGBC, gave the audience a lot of reason todoubt the validity of the results when he saidI was really kind of cringing about whatkind of data we would get. And, when Markand I started talking about what this survey,and what this study was going to be, heasked some pretty pointed questions aboutwhat were we going to do with it, and in theback of my head it was, you know, if itsbad, were certainly not going to tellanybody. And, and were going to fix theproblem and that will be good. But I knewhe wouldnt let that happen, so in the frontof my head was, if its bad Im going to letCathy [Cathy Turner, the senior analyst15 forthe New Buildings Institute] publish just hergraphs, with no explanation, and itll be so


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statistically impenetrable to anybody whocould actually articulate what was going on,that it wouldnt matter, because they, youknow, could only talk to somebody else whocould understand them, and theres not

many of those out there. So, the fact of, thedelightful fact of the results of the studybeing what I would consider to beoverwhelmingly positive considering howbad I thought it was going to come out, arepretty remarkable.16 Unfortunately, Mr.Owens seems to have described exactlywhat happened.

The study claims that On average,LEED buildings are 25-30% more efficientthan non-LEED buildings.1718 The USGBC

has publicized this claim

19

, and if LEEDbuildings really were saving that muchenergy, it would be a start albeit only amodest one in the right direction.

However, for a number of reasons, thepublicized figure is not only wrong, itappears that the reverse is actually true.

First of all, the buildings studiedwere not a random sample. Letters were sent

to the LEED representatives for all 552buildings that had been certified at thatpoint. Two hundred fifty responses werereceived, but complete energy data wasobtained from only 121 of the respondees,leaving a sample of only 22% of the totalnumber of certified buildings. This sampleappears to constitute only those owners oroperators of LEED certified buildings whowere willing to divulge their energy usedata, which is a little like making

generalizations about drivers blood alcohollevels from the results of people whovolunteer for a roadside breathalyzer test.Yet, the USGBC uses it to back up their

claims of 25 30% energy saving20

.There is nothing in the report

to support the 30% claim, whichappears to be a simple exaggeration.The buildings that were included inthe study were determined to have anenergy use index of 69

21, meaning

that they use a total of 69,000 BTUsof energy per square foot per year.The study then compared this to theUS Energy InformationAdministrations CommercialBuildings Energy ConsumptionSurveys index of 91,000 BTUs persquare foot per year for existingbuildings. As 69,000 is 24% less than91,000, this is the basis of their claimthat they are saving 25%22.

However, this is based on oneof the unfair comparisons made in thestudy. First, the LEED buildings wereall built or renovated after 2000,which means they automaticallybenefit from recent advances in theenergy efficiency of lighting fixtures,cooling equipment, etc. The New


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Buildings Institute chose to compare to theUSEIA/CBECS energy use index for allbuildings in the database, including thosebuilt before 192023. When asked during thepresentation about the vintage of the

buildings that are in CBECS, Cathy Turnersaid I knew we didnt have enough graphs,we took that one out. But if you could haveseen the graph of CBECS energy use bybuilding vintage it doesnt really make thatmuch difference. There is some suggestionin the most recent batch that the brand newstudy had a few post 2000 buildings and itlooks like maybe they were doing better, butyou know its kind of early to know that

24.

It is actually not too early to look at

the newest CBECS report, which waspublished in 2006, and there is more than asuggestion that some post 2000 buildings areincluded; there is a separate category forbuildings built between 2000 and 2003.They are down to using 81,600 BTUs persquare foot per year25. It would have beenmeaningful to compare new buildings withnew buildings, which would have shown asaving of only 15%. That is still a saving,but the study wouldnt have shown anysaving at all if it didnt make one moreunfair comparison.

The CBECS index is based on themean, oraverage energy use per squarefoot26, while the LEED energy use index of69,000 used in the study is something verydifferent: the median value

27, which is thenumber separating the higher half of a groupof measurements from the lower half.Comparing the median value of one datasetto the mean value of another dataset is aworthless comparison, but in this case itmade the LEED buildings look much moreenergy efficient than they actually are. Thetruth can only be found by comparing meanvalues to mean values.

When someone else at theGreenbuild presentation asked why themedian was used, Cathy Turner responded

by saying Average is often used as ageneral term to apply to any of the ways youmight average mean or median or mode, andwe did use the median in this data to avoidbeing skewed by the, the extreme results.

28

Of course, the extreme results are part of themeasured data, but neither the 66 pagepreliminary report on the study nor the 46page final report ever reveals what the meanenergy use index for the LEED buildings is.

However, Cathy Turner laterconfirmed that the actual mean value of theenergy use indexes of the 121 LEED ratedbuildings included in the study is 10529. Thisis 29% higherthan the CBECS mean of 81.6for new buildings. This is still not a perfect

statistical comparison, because the CBECSdata is total energy use divided by totalsquare footage, which yields a building-sizeweighted average, while building size is notincluded when calculating the mean of thereported LEED building energy usemeasurements.

The New Buildings Institute saysthat the LEED energy use was high becausethe sampling contained some lab buildings,but the CBECS data also contains labbuildings30. There are other imperfections inthe comparison, such as differences inclimate and weather, but the comparisonwas good enough for the New BuildingsInstitute to use and the USGBC to referencewhen the study made LEED buildings lookgood, and it is still the fairest comparisonavailable.

Therefore, what the data actuallyindicate is that the 22% of LEED buildingswhose owners participated in the study andreported their energy data used an averageof 29% more energy than the most similarbuildings in the dataset that the studyauthors chose to use as a comparison! Goingto so much trouble and expense to end upwith buildings that use more energy thancomparable buildings is not only a tragedy,it is also a fraud perpetuated on US


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consumers trying their best to achieve trueenvironmental friendliness. Worse, byspending so many years without measuringanything, and then obscuring the truth whendata is finally available, the USGBC has

squandered the tremendous public good willthat has accumulated behind the cause ofenvironmentally friendly buildings. Thisshocking failure raises the question of whatcould go so wrong in buildings to produceresults opposite to what so many people aretrying to achieve.

The answer is that attention isfocused on the appearance of energyefficiency, not its accomplishment. TheLEED system does this by rewarding

designers forpredicting that a building willsave energy, not for proving that a buildingactually saves energy.

The LEED system asks for twopredictions. The first, called the baseline,is a prediction of how much energy abuilding might use over the course of a yearif it were a normal building, and the secondpredicts how much energy it will use withthe energy saving features included. Thegreater the difference between the twopredictions, the better LEED rating thebuilding gets. However, predicting abuildings energy use is like predicting theweather: if all the relevant factors areknown, it is still very difficult.

There are exceptions, such as anisland in the Caribbean, where a week fromTuesday it will probably be mild and sunnywith just a sprinkle of rain in the afternoon.Likewise, the energy use of a very simplebuilding such as a parking garage is fairlyeasy to predict. But as soon a building getsheating, cooling, and ventilation systems,walls and windows, computers, and peopleoccupy it, things get complicated fast.Predictions are further complicated by thefact that the best methods for making abuilding energy-efficient in Minnesota dont

apply well in Florida, and what works in a

hotel may not work as well in a school.Even the study commissioned by theUSGBC admits that predictions areproblematic when it says that In otherwords, the accuracy of individual energy use

predictions is very inconsistent.31Despite the obvious problems, the

rush to rate buildings based on predictionscontinues. Starting in January 2008, aprogram funded by a New York Stateagency pays money to developers who say

they intend to build energy efficientmultifamily buildings. The developer getsthousands of dollars for registering aplanned development, and later, based onthe size of the building and the differencebetween two predictions, gets additionalincentives that can total well over a milliondollars. A small final payment is somewhatrelated to actual energy use, but the buildingis not required to perform better than otherbuildings it only has to perform better thanan estimate32.

The poor performance of buildingsrated by predictions represents a tragic lossof the opportunity for real progress inreducing energy use in buildings. But, withLEED ratings for new buildings offering nocredit for actually saving energy, it is nowonder that designers feel pressure to shifttheir focus from achieving energy efficiencyto the appearance of energy efficiency.

This pressure influences everydecision involved in designing what shouldbe an environmentally friendly building,including one that every design team faces:will the building have solar panels? Thepanels provide a perfect photo opportunity,which makes them a publicists dream. Butmoney spent on solar panels cant also bespent elsewhere, and the photos dont show


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how effectively they actually meet thebuildings energy loads.

The type of solar energy systems thatmake electricity, as opposed to those thatheat water, currently cost about $9 per

watt

33

. That is, per watt produced at noon,but it is not noon all day, and the noondaysun in Chicago is weaker than in Texas. Arough rule of thumb for the continental USis that for a system facing South, tiltedtoward the sun, and never shaded, each wattof noon capacity produces about 1,000Watt-hours of electricity per year34. USutility companies call that 1,000 Watt-hoursa kilowatt-hour, and sell it for an average ofnine cents35. This makes solar electric

paybacks frustratingly long.Instead of making electricity withsolar panels, a designer could choose to saveelectricity with more energy efficientlighting. The same nine dollars could paythe cost difference between three standardlight bulbs36 and three compact fluorescentbulbs37. If 100 Watt bulbs are replaced by 23Watt bulbs, with each bulb saving 77 Watts,three combined would save 231 Watts. Thismeans the bulbs would take approximatelyfour hours to save about the same 1,000Watt-hours of electricity that the solarsystem produces in a year.

This shocking differenceshows how much more effective it canbe to save electricity than it is to makeit. Of course, in the long term, makingelectricity from the sun will probablybecome critically important, and thebest building would have both solarpanels and fluorescent-only fixtures,which work even better than screw-influorescents. But right now, as long asactual energy use is not measured, andappearance is more important thanreality, a designer choosing betweensaving a lot of electricity with betterlighting or producing a little electricity

with solar panels is choosing betweenobscurity and recognition.

One building that has gotten a lot ofpublicity for having solar panels mountedvertically on its facades where everyone can

see them

38

was built in New York City in2003. It is billed as Americas firstenvironmentally advanced residentialtower.

39 But, because the panels are not

tilted to face the sun, they dont producenearly as much electricity as they would ifthey were mounted at the correct solar angle.Worse, they are not even facing due South.Some are mounted on a facade that facesSouthwest, and others face the street, whichleaves them facing roughly northwest4041.

Still another group of panels is mountedwhere rooftop equipment will throwshadows on at least one of them at alltimes42. Unfortunately, when solar electricpanels are wired together in a group, as theygenerally are, shade falling on one panelgreatly diminishes the output from the wholegroup of panels.

The choice to not install the panelson angled brackets on the roof, where theywould produce more electricity but wouldnot be visible from the street, made theinstallation a colossal waste of perfectlygood solar panels. Despite this, the building


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is held up as an example of anenvironmental friendly building. Theowners made many other efforts to improvethe building, but the solar panels get most ofthe attention. Like any such building, the

designers were under pressure to make theimage of being green a priority over actualenergy efficiency.

The design phase of a buildings lifeis not the only time this pressure exertsitself. A buildings energy performance alsodepends on important decisions made duringconstruction, and even later, when thebuilding is occupied. But with LEED ratingsissued based on a buildings design, there islittle incentive to pay attention to these

other, critical areas.

For example, a design might ask forenergy efficient windows mounted in wellinsulated walls. A really good architect takesthe design a step further and shows how thewindows should be connected to the walls.But, no matter how good the design, if noone makes sure the plans are actuallyfollowed during construction, the windowmight not be installed properly. Air leakingthrough a gap between the window and thewall wastes energy, and also confoundsenergy use predictions. Worse, if the air leakcauses someone to feel a cold draft andadjust the thermostat, even more energy iswasted, and attempts to predict annualenergy use become folly.

Part of the solution is the measuretwice, cut once approach to installingwindows, which does nothing to get thebuilding publicity because it is low-tech, andis as old as the first time a cave dweller cut apiece of wood.

The failure to measure a greenbuildings energy efficiency by publicly

revealing how much energy it actually usesalso influences countless decisions madeafter construction is finished. It is hard towalk very far down any street in the USbefore seeing a light turned on that doesnt

need to be on during the daytime, or that isleft on unnecessarily at night. The USGBCtries to address this problem by requiringdocumentation promising commissioningof automatic lighting sensors and othercontrol systems in all LEED certifiedbuildings, but since the energy part of LEEDis all about predictions, and not aboutmeasured achievements, that strategy is notworking.

For example, a LEED rating was

awarded to a 46 story office building built


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on 57th Street in New York City in 200643.The building is reportedly equipped withsensors that turn the lights off based onoccupancy44, yet lights throughout thebuilding stay on through the night, night

after night

45

. The building still has its LEEDrating, and the owners still describe it asthe most environmentally friendly, orgreen, office tower in New York Cityhistory.46

As these examples illustrate, energyefficiency is dependent on specificprocedures at least as much as on the use ofspecial products or technologies. But,because better procedures do little ornothing to promote the image of energy

efficiency, they have been mostly ignored inthe rush to rate buildings as green.There is only one realistic way to

rate the energy efficiency of a building: byhow much energy it actually uses after it isoccupied. For any green building ratingsystem to be truly effective it must requirepublic scrutiny of utility bills for all ratedbuildings, not just a few selected examples.Any building or rating system that does notmake all energy use data public, and showsubstantial savings relative to comparablebuildings, does not deserve to be called

environmentally friendly, regardless of howmany supposed green features areincluded.

Only by rating buildings according

to actual energy consumption can a ratingsystem reward success, and encourageenergy saving in not only the design phase,but also during construction, as well as afterthe building is occupied. Even fancy energy

technologies require hard work tosuccessfully integrate them into the buildingand get them to work as intended, which arating system that doesnt measure energyuse does nothing to encourage.

But rating buildings by how muchenergy they actually use poses a stickyproblem: it requires the building to first bebuilt and occupied. The USGBC and otherrating organizations are under pressure toaward valuable ratings to new buildings, oreven to construction sites that are barelymore than empty lots47. This pressure

encourages the current practice ofawarding those ratings based on thedifference between two estimates,which is obviously not working.

The most realistic approachwould be to first award a tentativegreen building rating that would besubject to redaction based on actualenergy use, and only issue a finalrating if the utility bills show thebuilding really is energy efficient. Ofcourse the ratings should countmeasured energy use as the maincriteria, not a minor portion. Ratedbuildings should mount award plaqueswith removable screws, because eachyear the buildings energy bills would


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have to be reviewed. Buildings that did notcontinue to perform would lose their ratings,and those that performed well couldcontinue to have something to be proud of.

This brings up the question of whatthe preliminary rating should be based on.Obviously it should be something morereliable than the difference between twoenergy use predictions, as currently used inthe LEED system.

To be useful the rating should bebased on something very simple andreliable, yet incorporate aspects of the manythings that affect a buildings energy use.Ideally, it would also be much easier toverify than the difference between twopredictions, which are usually complicatedcomputer models.

Fortunately, a simple solutionalready exists, one that is alreadysuccessfully incorporated in building codesin some parts of the world48: the amount ofsource energy required to operate theheating, cooling, and ventilation systems atpeak load. A big building gets a heating andcooling system that requires a lot of energyto operate, and a small building gets a smallsystem. Anyone who proposes installing abig, powerful system in a small building hasto find a way to keep the buildingcomfortable with a smaller system, whichmeans making the building more energyefficient.

While system capacity is not anexact predictor of energy use, it is arelatively effective proxy, and has manyadvantages. Equipment size and buildingsize can be verified before, during, or afterconstruction. The sizing procedure isnothing new in the industry, as someone

already sizes equipment for every building.Using this same decision for tentativelyrating the environmental friendliness ofbuildings would cost essentially nothing,and not even require adding a new task. It

would just require a routine job to be doneeffectively, and carefully.Careful equipment sizing itself

would have built-in benefits: not only issmaller equipment less expensive topurchase and install, but it leads to energysaving and improved comfort, as oversizedequipment can cause fluctuating indoortemperatures, poor humidity control, andenergy waste. Another benefit is that thecoordinated effort required to size just large

enough equipment would encourage closercooperation between building designers andmechanical system designers, which mostpeople involved with the constructionindustry would readily agree is a change thatis sorely needed. In the future, as buildingsget more and more energy efficient,updating preliminary green building ratingswould be as simple as changing one number.

Someday, someone might come upwith a better way to predict the energy useof buildings that arent built yet. Until then,heating and cooling system capacity limitsare the best available option.

Once buildings are built andoccupied, they should be rated by how muchenergy they actually use in the second fullyear after construction or renovation.Waiting until the second year for an actualrating would be frustrating, but would avoidmany problems with the first year. Forexample, utilities are usually turned onbefore construction is complete, making ithard to say just when the first year starts. Ifcounting is started from the date when thegovernment issues a certificate ofoccupancy, the bills might be unrealisticallylow because of partial occupancy, orunrealistically high because of problemswith the building that take time to fix. And,


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of course, ratings would have to be renewedregularly, based on actual energyconsumption.

The USGBC actually does have aseparate, little known LEED rating system

for existing buildings, but energy is aminority of the consideration for a rating,and the requirement is that the building useless energy than 60% of comparablebuildings49. In other words, it can use moreenergy than about 40% of comparablebuildings, which is a low bar indeed.

A truly effective rating system wouldencourage ever decreasing energyconsumption by simply stating how muchenergy the building used, instead ofawarding points, stars, or other rankings.Stating how much energy a building usesalso avoids statements such as 20% lessthan which is not an amount of energy.

All the energy sources supplied to abuilding can be converted to KiloWatt-Hours, so a rating would look like this: Thebuilding used 180,000 Kilowatt-Hours ofenergy in the past 12 months, which isequivalent to 120 KWH per square foot peryear.

People would soon be overheardsaying things such as My house usedonly110 KWH per square foot last year.

Oh, but thats because the two ofyou live in a 3,500 square foot house. Weused 134 KWH per square foot last year, butthe four of us live in a 1,100 foot house, soour bill comes out to only 147,000 KWH forthe whole year. And, with the new lights we

just installed, were hoping to get under130,000 next year.

This sort of talk might sound tootechnical for the average person, butAmericans didnt take long to learn how to

talk about how many gigabytes andmegahertz their computer has, so surely theycan learn to boast about low energy use.

A significant number of buildingsthat have energy use low enough to boastabout have been built in the US over theyears. But, with no widespread system inplace for measuring or reporting actualenergy use, these buildings and thestrategies that enabled the energy savingsare as unrecognized as environmentally

friendly building materials were before theLEED system popularized them. The factthat many of the most energy efficientbuildings do not depend on fancy newtechnologies only makes it harder foreffective strategies to get recognition.

It is far from the sole fault of theUSGBC that fancy technologies whichenhance the image of energy efficiency getmost of the attention, but any system withthe words Leadership and Energy in thename must, by definition, recognizebuildings that have achieved measured andverifiable energy savings.

Building energy use is perhaps beingthe largest field of human endeavor in whichalmost nobody measures anything. But, thesituation is actually worse than that:measurements are taken by utilitycompanies every month, and are largelyignored. Utility company records shouldstart to be used to rate our countrysbuildings immediately.


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An important step is the creation of a

central database of energy use per squarefoot, where any building owner who wishescan have their building listed and comparedto a very large number of similar buildings.Perhaps the US Energy InformationAdministration, the organization that alreadydoes the CBECS study, could do it. Since2002 they have had the authority to getutility bills on any building, with or withoutthe owners consent (coupled with therequirement to maintain anonymity), which

enables them to evaluate 100% of thebuildings included in a green buildingprogram. Utility companies can help bymaking energy use data searchable on theirwebsites by building address for anyonewho gives permission. Tax assessors officeshave data on the approximate size of everybuilding in the country, and also know ifbuildings are used as schools, houses,apartments, etc.

Smart realtors could give prospective

buyers listings that compare actual energyuse of various buildings. Or, if a sellerrefused to let a utility company divulge theirbuildings energy use data, the realtor wouldtell the buyer I printed out the energy useof all the properties except this one, whoseowner wouldnt release the information. Inthe meantime, until a central database isavailable, realtors can start now by askingsellers for utility company account numbers,and downloading billing histories from

utility company websites. As soon as thispractice becomes widespread, it will serveas a powerful and equitable financialincentive to save energy.

Linking these vast databases togethersounds like a lot of work, but the UScurrently uses 24%50 of the worlds oil,despite having less than 5% of the worlds

population. This situation obviously cannotcontinue indefinitely. The only question ishow soon this will change, and how painfulthe change will be. With the increasingimportance of energy to our economy, to the

worlds political and military stability, andto saving the planet from global warming,we need to have effective rating systems assoon as possible.

The true results of the study ofLEED rated buildings should mark the endof the era of trying to use estimates, pointssystems, or checklists to rate the energyefficiency of buildings. It is time to stopsquandering our countrys future on theimage of energy efficiency, and start

designing and building buildings that reallyare energy efficient.The LEED system is not only

ineffective, but is harmful to theenvironment, to the prosperity of ourcountry, and to effective energy savingmethods which are ignored in favor of theimage of energy efficiency. LEED should beabandoned immediately, and be replacedwith a system that is based on actualverifiable energy use measurements.

1 Anderson, Beth Quoting Ashley Katz, USGBCCommunication Director LEED Program Leads toPotential Profits, NuWire investor 03 Dec, 2007.2 Gendall, John Going Green is Good for YourWallet Business Week 27 June, 20083 Gendall, John LEED-for-Homes to Launch atGreenbuild Architectural Record 31 Oct, 20074 PassivHaus Institut 12th International Conferenceon Passive Houses 2008 Conference Proceedings,Pages 399-4005 Kamanetz, Anya. The Green Standard?FastCompany.com 19 December, 20076 Kamanetz, Anya Feedback from ReadersFastCompany.com Dec, 20077 Kamanetz, Anya. The Green Standard?FastCompany.com 19 December, 20078 US Energy Information Administration - ElectricPower Annual 20069 U. S. Energy Information Administration, AnnualEnergy Review 2007, Page 4110 ibid


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11 USGBC Transforming the Built EnvironmentPage 1112 Holowka, Taryn Immediate Savings andMeasurable Results Environmental Design +Construction July, 2007 Page S813

USGBC - Green Building Rating System for NewConstruction & Major Renovations Version 2.2, Page32-4614 New Buildings Institute Energy Performance ofLEED for New Construction Buildings, FinalReport15 New Buildings Institute The Energy Performanceof LEED Buildings Cover Page16 Audio CD of conference proceedings, presentationYL12, slide 5, time 00:15 through 01:16. To play,click on folder Y12, click on subfolder Y12, clickon Player HTML Document, click on slide 1, makesure speakers are turned on.17 New Buildings Institute Energy Performance ofLEED for New Construction Buildings, FinalReport Text Page 5 (PDF page 9)18 New Buildings Institute The Energy Performanceof LEED Buildings Page 5819 USGBC News Release 03 April, 200820 ibid21 New Buildings Institute Energy Performance ofLEED for New Construction Buildings, FinalReport Text Page 2 (PDF Page 6)22 Frankel, Mark, e-mail on 07 August, 200823 US Energy Information Administration,Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey,2003 Table C3A, page 1, line one, last column

24 Audio CD of conference proceedings, presentationYL12, slide 6, time 03:14 through 03:40.25 US Energy Information Administration,Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey,2003 page 1, Section: Year Constructed, 2000 to2003, last column26 Employee of the Commercial Buildings EnergyConsumption Survey, US Energy InformationAdministration, via e-mail on 04 Feb, 200827 New Buildings Institute Energy Performance ofLEED for New Construction Buildings, FinalReport Text Page 2 (PDF Page 6)28 Audio CD of conference proceedings, presentation

YL12, slide 6, time 10:46 through 10:5629 Turner, Cathy, of the New Buildings Institute, viae-mail on 05 August, 200830 Employee of the Commercial Buildings EnergyConsumption Survey, US Energy InformationAdministration, via e-mail on 11 Aug, 200831 New Buildings Institute Energy Performance ofLEED for New Construction Buildings, FinalReport Text Page 22 (PDF page 26)32 NYSERDA Energy $mart IncentiveTable

33 SharpUSA EZCalculator sharpusa.com34 Torcellini, Paul A. PhD., P.E., et al. SolarTechnologies & The Building Envelope Journal ofthe American Society of Heating and RefrigerationEngineers April, 2007 Page 1835

US Energy Information Administration ElectricPower Monthly, 10 June, 200836 Home Depot quote for incandescent bulbs37 Home Depot quote for compact fluorescent bulbs38 Turpin, Joanna, R Feats First BNET Feb, 200639 McLinden, Steve Eco-Friendly Apartments Getthe Green Light International Real Estate Investor01 January, 200440 Turpin41 Google Map of 20 River Terrace, New York, NYshows West faade is actually North of true West42 Photo Solar panels shaded by rooftop equipment43 Building is on Eighth Avenue and West 57th Street44 Thompson, Anne Publisher Turns a Green PageNBC News 12 July, 200745 Photo LEED rated office building with lights onat 2AM on Monday46 Brochure handed out by doormen in building lobby47 Photo LEED rated construction site48 Model Regional Code for Energy Efficiency inBuildings in Russia, Translation from RussianVersion 20 Nov, 1997, Page 949 USGBC - Green Building Rating System forExisting Buildings, version 2, page 5050 U. S. Energy Information Administration, AnnualEnergy Review 2007, page 36

building rating systems - henry gifford

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