Leed: Effective or Outdated?

LEED: Effective or Outdated?
The Importance of sustainable buildings is vastly growing. Many organizations are being founded in order to motivate builders to construct sustainable buildings. The United States Green Building Council has created a certification system, known as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or ’LEED.’   This system evaluates certain sustainable buildings and rewards them for their energy efficiency and environmental friendliness.   In Ajay Garde’s article, “Sustainable by Design?”, and in Alex Zimmerman and Charles J. Kibert’s article, ”Informing LEED’s next generation with The Natural Step, the LEED certification system is analyzed by different perspectives producing different opinions.
In his article, Garde discusses the importance of building sustainable buildings and planning LEED certified neighborhood developments. The LEED certification system consists of certain criteria with certain amounts of receivable points which the building must possess in order to be certified. Currently, the government uses conventional regulations and building codes to ensure the minimum requirements of a building. This causes many builders to poorly construct a building with a low efficiency level. The LEED certification system goes beyond these requirements and inspires innovation for the maximum efficiency and safety of a building. The green building industry has seen a large increase with the introduction of the LEED certification system and many hope to see the system increase more competition among builders to produce sustainable buildings. However, The LEED system seems to attract the commercial construction industry more than the residential industry and neighborhood development groups. This is because the construction of sustainable buildings is far more costly than conventional construction. Many of the new technologies integrated in sustainable buildings are high in cost and many construction methods require more man hours than...