Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - Essay Example

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a program that is providing construction industry in the United States with an independent third-party verification that a building or a community is built using strategies that are aimed at achieving high performance in crucial areas of human and environmental health (Kubba, 2010). These areas include sustainable site development, saving on water resources, increasing efficiency in energy consumption, and overall indoor environmental quality.

The LEED program rates buildings and construction in all areas such as schools, hospitals, commercial buildings, homes, industrial buildings among others (Meisel, 2010). LEED for new constructions addresses design and construction activities for new buildings and renovations; it helps lay a sustainable foundation for operation and maintenance practices after the completion of the building. In the existing buildings, LEED requires that they implement sustainable practices that will minimize the negative impact on the environment. Such practices include water and power utilization, use of environment-friendly materials for maintenance and adjustments, sustainable policies on buying, and waste stream administration among others. LEED program for core and shell can be used where the developers have control of the design and erection of the whole core and shell base structure but has no control of the internal tenant fittings. In commercial interiors, it mainly focuses on tenants who have leased some specific parts of the building to create a working environment that is healthy, productive to work in and that does disturb the balance of environmental conditions thriving within the building.

LEED for retail is concerned with the unique nature of the conditions needed for retail businesses; it uses the different needs for various retail businesses such as opening hours, parking needs, water and energy requirements among others. In view of this, the LEED program provides two options for projects seeking certification; they include new construction and major renovation that addresses the details of construction or substantial renovations in retail buildings and commercial interior, which is concerned, with details about tenant space where the tenant is changing already existing fittings.

In-home construction, the LEED program is concerned with ensuring habitable conditions that provide maximum health benefits to the people living in the homes and at the same time making substantial savings on crucial resources such as fuel and water.

LEED for Neighbourhood enlargement ensures that neighborhoods, partial neighborhoods, or multiple neighborhoods are constructed in a way that integrates ideologies of responsible expansion, urbanism and environment-friendly construction into the initial nationalized scheme for neighborhood plan.

LEED for school was developed to address the design and construction of K-12 schools; it is concerned with class acoustics, mold preclusion, major preparation, and ecological site appraisal.

 Due to the specific needs of the health care environment, the LEED program for new construction would not be able to address all these needs therefore the need to have a program that was specifically designed for health care. This program is concerned with creating healthful, durable, and affordable practices that are friendly to the environment and conducive to medical activities.

The rating system consists of several credit categories that include the following: sustainable sites credit that encourages building strategies to minimize the negative impact on the environment, water efficiency credits to encourage efficiency in water consumption, energy and atmosphere credits that encourage efficient energy performance (Cottrell, 2011). The credits also include material and resources credits that encourage the use of sustainable building materials and indoor environmental air quality credits that promote better indoor air quality and access to light. The various credits have varied points assigned to them depending on their impact. Sustainable sites credits have a maximum of 21 points, water-efficient has 11 points, energy and atmosphere have 37 points, materials and resources have 14 points, indoor environmental quality has 17 points and innovation in operations has four points.

A law should be put in place to ensure that all new buildings that come up adhere to the LEED standards. The chronic capitalism that most of the business people have embraced has a negative impact on the quality of buildings since most of the owners are concerned with minimizing costs of putting up the building at the expense of the health of the people occupying it and the impact it has on the environment around. The great savings in terms of energy requirements and water far outweigh the costs that may be incurred in putting up buildings compliant with LEED standards; these savings will also have a positive impact on the environment, the health, and the safety of the people using those buildings.

The LEED program is placed to help the country leap great benefits from the new designs of construction due to its strict and innovative ways of encouraging stakeholders to construct buildings that are compliant with the set standards. The authorities should ensure that a law is passed that will require all new buildings to adhere to the LEED program standards.