In his opening remarks, Mr. Gifford discussed both his problems with the LEED system generally, as well the basis of the critiques in his paper. “The first study we heard was in ‘07, and even before that, it was becoming law. The study came out and said that LEED-rated buildings save 25-30 percent compared to a national database. Well, I did a radical thing. I read the study, and I think there’s nothing in the study that supports, related to, or even references the conclusion. I think the conclusion was invented and stuck on. They found a 24 percent difference between two numbers, mean energy used by the national database and the median of the LEED buildings. Mean to mean would have shown that LEED did 29 percent higher.”

Mr. Owens responded by agreeing with Mr. Gifford that “before this research was done, there was a leap of faith involved, but the characterization of this as a scandal and a con is really unfortunate. I’ve never found anyone other than Henry saying that these buildings are using more energy. LEED is an assessment of potential for a building to perform. That’s all it is. We could do better to educate the public that the model isn’t good enough, yet. We haven’t really gone through and said ‘this is the first step in a 6 or 7 or 8 step process.’”

Fred Unger, a former board member of NESEA, challenged Mr. Owens and USGBC from the floor “to commit to not putting LEED or USGBC on any legislation” and called it a “scandal” that “LEED is being put into building codes when it still has these bugs to work out.” Mr. Owens responded by saying that although “the USGBC has never advocated putting this into law, it’s not the best use of this rating system.” According to Mr. Prager, Mr. Owens said USGBC would not make that commitment to keep LEED out of any legislation. He did, however, state that perhaps USGBC should have been more of an advocate in terms of articulating that LEED was not meant to be used as a legislative tool. Just as a side note, as recently as approximately one year ago, USGBC did have a statement on its home page that LEED was not intended for adoption into legislation or local building codes, but I am not certain whether it’s still there in any capacity or not.

I think it’s important for USGBC to engage building scientists like Henry Gifford at events such as these and, for that, I give it and Brendan Owens credit for attending the NESEA forum; indeed, one of the major disappointments of this past year’s Greenbuild event was USGBC’s failure to acknowledge LEED performance failures and other risk implications of building green. In a post at gbNYC that discussed the event, I wrote, with respect to building performance, that “[m]obilizing the industry is important, and creating green good will is great too, but I think the USGBC is missing a big opportunity here by not embracing these types of leaders who can help improve the energy performance of our buildings- we can’t lose sight of that ultimate goal.” Hopefully that’s what’s beginning to place here.

I also think it’s encouraging that green building performance issues are beginning to receive more media attention, particularly in the context of LEED. If anything, the NAIOP study and Henry Gifford’s ongoing efforts have stakeholders on both sides of the aisle considering the merits of predictive energy modeling more vigorously; hopefully that debate will continue as USGBC prepares to release its LEED 2009 system. In the interim, the construction and real estate attorney’s role in the context of building performance will continue to be- as Mr. Owens hinted at during the NESEA panel- educating clients that the LEED model “isn’t good enough, yet” and may present liability implications that they have not previously had to consider.

I am certain there will be much more to say about both this forum and the NAIOP study in the coming weeks and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and reactions in the comments below. I also encourage you to check out the comments to BuildingGreen.com’s article discussing Mr. Gifford’s “Lies Damn Lies” paper, where folks like Fred Unger, Rob Watson, and Mr. Gifford himself have left a tremendously interesting series of responses which I think that you’ll find to be quite insightful.

• Lies Damn Lies (BuildingGreen.com)
• LEED Controversy (Michael Prager)