Importance of LEED certification as an impact on green buildings

Importance of LEED certification as an impact on green buildings

Construction industries, since its adoption, have made a huge impact on resource consumption. Compliance with regulation has made the architects think of creating a design and urban development of a project and management schemes that are sustainability-oriented practices. BIM Services helps them to design and manage sustainable building with less deploy of resources and saves time in 3D BIM Modeling.

LEED Certification and its importance

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a third-party system that verifies the development of a green building. New building designing and construction has brought a negative impact on the environment for many years. Because of this, builders and owners have now turned to make environmentally conscious building and communities for the project construction.

Green Building Council have done best practices in sustainability matters and create awareness of environment importance in the construction industry for which measuring tools have been used to know the environment impact of the building built.

LEED Certification includes water efficiency, Energy efficiency, CO2 Emission reduction, and Indoor Environment quality helps to know how environmentally friendly and sustainable the buildings in real are worthy of LEED Certification and at what level it should be attained.

LEED Certification works for all types of buildings, and it also covers all the phases from the development of the design to construction retrofits. Level of score obtained for a LEED score certification lies upon the selection of levels that are Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.  It is given as per criteria that are Energy and Atmosphere, Location and transportation, Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Materials and Resources, Innovation and Regional Priority.

LEED provides a framework to create a healthy, efficient, and cost-saving green building that is globally recognized for the sustainability of green buildings. Though there is significant importance that the LEED Certification plays in the construction of a green building project as narrated below:

Cost-savings: – Obtaining LEED Certification or improve LEED score, so that more money can be saved in the long run. It boosts to reduce overhead for commercial businesses that are into construction of a building or structures. By reducing energy and water efficiency, it can save the amount from bills in the long run.

Home can get heating and cool with minimal energy usage, which helps to minimize indoor and outdoor water usage, energy usage, etc. 

Value Creation: – According to home capability, green/energy efficiency is decided. It is believed that the resale price of green buildings is more than 30% than in conventional homes.

Reduces environment footprints: – A LEED Gold certification building can produce 34% fewer carbon emissions than a non-certified building that impacts directly to the environment. Indoor air is 10 times more populated than the outdoor air as per the Environmental Protection Agency. LEED Certified building is designed to maximize the quality of the air and reduced the toxins and pollutants.

A LEED Certified building undergoes on-site inspections, detailed document review, and performance to testing health and safety of its residents. Building’s operation and construction often lead to creating unhealthy indoor environments. Due to which many people get Sick Building Syndrome, which makes absenteeism and decrease in productivity.

Building design and Construction standards

Design in the coming year will be made on the performance of the building in terms of energy usage, water usage, and carbon emissions. Software like Revit prepares design in consideration of keeping g environment in mind. Modeling design as per building energy performance from the start can help in building standards and let us know whether to implement LEED Certification or not.

International Green Certification Code is developed for making green building design a code requirement. It is becoming a mandatory requirement for the builders and owners for developing energy and green, efficient buildings. Standards are getting mandatory on the building code for permission of making the green building.

Net zero energy buildings are designed based on the building having zero net energy consumption per year. It needs a lot of upfront investment and be crucial about the implementation of net-zero energy costs.

Need to develop communities that emphasized sustaining, transit-oriented, pedestrian crossing, and mixed-use developments for the well-being of local communities that have centralized manner to design such green, efficient buildings.

As LEED Certification is getting mandatory for the construction of a green building, few cities are offering incentives to the developers to build green. A requirement such as codes, standards, or other measures to fulfill the green building mandatory is worked upon by regulations.

Green Building Concept and its benefits

Homes without green building create a negative impact on the health and well-being of occupants staying in a building. For more than 50 years or so approximately building are using resources, generate waste, and emit the greenhouse gas effect through the lifecycle of a building.

Green Building makes the design, construction, and operation of a building to minimize the resources, reduce wastage and negative environmental impacts, boosts the health of occupants, increase their productivity, and decrease life-cycle costs. Scan to BIM Modeling Services helps to renovate the existing building into green building concept by following the codes, standards and attaining building’s performance on the basis of material used in the construction that can have direct impact on environment.

Green building provides many benefits such as addressing climate changes issues, creating sustainable, thriving communities, and driving economic growth. Benefits of green building can be elaborated into three categories: – Environmental, Economic, and social.

Environmental

•    Intensify and preserve biodiversity and ecosystems.

•    Refine air and water efficiency quality

•    Reduce wastage

•    Shield and restore natural renewable resources

Economic

•    Reduce overhead business costs

•    Improve the activeness of occupants

•    Increase asset value and profits

•    Optimize life-cycle performance of a business operation

Social

•    Increase the comfort and health of occupants residing

•    Enhance indoor air quality that is most concerned

•    Enhance the overall quality of life

Conclusion

Green Building or Sustainable buildings are becoming a vital part of the construction industries as by regulation and governing rule; it is becoming a mandate to implement green building concept. That can lay less impact on the environment, improves the productivity of occupants residing in a building, reduce costs of material and resources, eliminates wastage and generate proper requirement based on the performance of existing or new building code and standards. 

In the construction of a green building, there is a requirement of getting LEED certified, which operates at different cities depending upon code, material, and standards to be used in the construction. There are levels of LEED Certification that helps the construction industry to enhance the ability of building being performed and maintaining environmental impact positively on the health and comfort of the occupants.

Author
  • Bhagwati Pathak
    Bhagwati Pathak

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