USGBC certifies 10,000th commercial building project

The USGBC awarded its 10,000th LEED rating, to the recently constructed Live Oak Family Center building in Santa Cruz, Calif., which was awarded LEED Platinum.

September 1, 2011

The U.S. Green Building Council reached a new milestone with its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system: The 10,000th commercial building project was certified to the organization’s standards.

The project that brought the LEED system to a new threshold is a recently constructed building for the Live Oak Family Center in the seaside town of Santa Cruz, Calif. With a roof-mounted solar power system and daylighting, the two-story building earned a LEED-Platinum certification, the highest level possible.

LEED-certified commercial space now totals 1.3 billion sq ft of property around the globe, according to Erin Emery, a spokeswoman for the Green Building Certification Institute, which provides the third-party confirmation for LEED certifications.

Although the rating system and its label are based in the U.S. and there are sister Green Building Councils around the world, several international properties are certified under the USGBC’s LEED standards. For example, the Y.S. Sun Green Building Research Center at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, the country’s first "zero-carbon" building, earned LEED-Platinum certification earlier this summer.

The certification milestone comes as the USGBC opens up its latest update of LEED to public comment. LEED was designed to undergo continuous development, and one of the big things LEED 2012 aims to address are the gaps that can occur between the way a building is designed and the way it actually performs.

– Edited by Chris Vavra, Consulting-Specifying Engineer, www.csemag.com