USGBC Announces Updates to LEED v4

The U.S. Green Building Council announced updates to the primary version of the LEED green building certification program, LEED v4, to more directly address carbon emissions and climate change.

With the change, building design and construction and Interior design and construction projects will be able to demonstrate improvement in energy performance with LEED v4.1’s metric of energy cost or greenhouse gas emissions in addition to LEED v4’s original source energy metric.

For the last nine years, LEED v4 has been the primary and balloted version of LEED green building certification. However, its guidelines on reducing energy demand focused first on usage and efficiency. Meanwhile, LEED v4.1, introduced energy metrics on cost and greenhouse gas emissions, a first for LEED. Together, both LEED v4 and LEED v4.1 take on the evolving needs of the market and build on previous versions of the LEED ratings system.

The next version of the LEED rating system will enter the development phase in January. It will be guided by the Future of LEED Principles, which were developed after months of conversations that engaged the global LEED community.

LEED is powered by a community of volunteers that represent a spectrum of industries and professional expertise working groups and consensus committees. These volunteer groups will ensure that there are no gaps in knowledge or capacity as the work moves forward on LEED v5. The call for volunteers will open in December.