 LEED Credit Using concrete can facilitate the process of obtaining LEED® Green Building certification. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a point rating system devised by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to evaluate the environmental performance of a building and encourage market transformation towards sustainable design. The system is credit-based, allowing projects to earn points for environmentally friendly actions taken during the construction and use of a building. LEED was launched in an effort to develop a "consensus-based, market-driven rating system to accelerate the development and implementation of green building practices." The program is not rigidly structured; not every project must meet identical requirements to qualify.
Three LEED products are currently available: - LEED-NC v2.1 for new commercial construction and major renovation projects
- LEED-EB v1.0 for existing building operations
- LEED-CI v1.0 for commercial interiors projects
Concrete and LEED
Using concrete can increase the number of points awarded to a building in the LEED system. The following are suggestions for earning LEED-NC v2.1 points through the use of cement and concrete products. The paragraph headings correspond to the credit categories and the credit numbers in the LEED rating system. Points must be documented according to LEED procedures in order to be earned. The USGBC Web site, www.usgbc.org, contains a downloadable "letter template" that greatly simplifies the documentation requirements for LEED v2.1. The potential available points that can be earned by using concrete range from 11 to 21.
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