{"id":21422,"date":"2013-07-31T10:24:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T15:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21422"},"modified":"2013-07-31T10:24:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T15:24:36","slug":"what-leed-designers-deliver-is-what-most-leed-building-owners-want-namely-green-publicity-not-energy-savings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/07\/31\/what-leed-designers-deliver-is-what-most-leed-building-owners-want-namely-green-publicity-not-energy-savings\/","title":{"rendered":"“What LEED designers deliver is what most LEED building owners want – namely, green publicity, not energy savings”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bit of LEED debunking at The New Republic<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

When the Bank of America Tower opened in 2010, the press praised it as one of the world\u2019s \u201cmost environmentally responsible high-rise office building[s].\u201d It wasn\u2019t just the waterless urinals, daylight dimming controls, and rainwater harvesting. And it wasn\u2019t only the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification \u2014 the first ever for a skyscraper \u2014 and the $947,583 in incentives from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. It also had as a tenant the environmental movement\u2019s biggest celebrity. The Bank of America Tower had Al Gore.<\/p>\n

The former vice president wanted an office for his company, Generation Investment Management, that \u201crepresents the kind of innovation the firm is trying to advance,\u201d his real-estate agent said at the time. The Bank of America Tower, a billion-dollar, 55-story crystal skyscraper on the northwest corner of Manhattan\u2019s Bryant Park, seemed to fit the bill. It would be \u201cthe most sustainable in the country,\u201d according to its developer Douglas Durst. At the Tower\u2019s ribbon-cutting ceremony, Gore powwowed with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and praised the building as a model for fighting climate change. \u201cI applaud the leadership of the mayor and all of those who helped make this possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Gore\u2019s applause, however, was premature. According to data released by New York City last fall, the Bank of America Tower produces more greenhouse gases and uses more energy per square foot than any comparably sized office building in Manhattan. It uses more than twice as much energy per square foot as the 80-year-old Empire State Building. It also performs worse than the Goldman Sachs headquarters, maybe the most similar building in New York \u2014 and one with a lower LEED rating. It\u2019s not just an embarrassment; it symbolizes a flaw at the heart of the effort to combat climate change.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat LEED designers deliver is what most LEED building owners want \u2014 namely, green publicity, not energy savings,\u201d John Scofield, a professor of physics at Oberlin, testified before the House last year.<\/p>\n

Governments, nevertheless, have been happy to rely on LEED rather than design better metrics. Which is why New York\u2019s release of energy data last fall was significant. It provided more public-energy data for a U.S. city than has ever existed. It found the worst-performing buildings use three to five times more energy per square foot than the best ones. It also found that, if the most energy-intensive large buildings were brought up to the current seventy-fifth percentile, the city\u2019s total greenhouse gases could be reduced by 9 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bit of LEED debunking at The New Republic: When the Bank of America Tower opened in 2010, the press praised it as one of the world\u2019s \u201cmost environmentally responsible high-rise office building[s].\u201d It wasn\u2019t just the waterless urinals, daylight dimming controls, and rainwater harvesting. And it wasn\u2019t only the Leadership in Energy and Environmental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,65,28,13],"tags":[97,245,321,793],"class_list":["post-21422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-environment","category-media","category-usa","tag-advertising","tag-climatechange","tag-nyc","tag-subsidies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5zw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21423,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21422\/revisions\/21423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}