Rating Systems, Standards and Codes

“Should green building be mandatory or voluntary?  The answer is yes.”  That was the statement by a speaker at one of a series of sessions I attended Friday afternoon and Saturday morning at the 2011 AIA national convention.  With the emergence of the International Green Construction Code (IGCC), ASHRAE 189.1, Calgreen and other new standards, this question and the answer effectively summarize the next step in green building.  Green building will soon be both mandatory and voluntary in many locations.

The IGCC will provide a new minimum floor for green building.  It is designed as a mandatory requirement that will be adopted by local jurisdictions and enforced by local building officials.  It sets basic standards for a minimum level of green building.  In contrast, the LEED rating system is intended as a voluntary system that focuses on the highest levels of green building.

Rating Systems, Standards and Codes

I found the chart above to be particularly helpful, a version of which was presented at one of the AIA educational sessions yesterday.  The difference between rating systems like LEED, standards like ASHRAE 189.1, and model codes like IGCC can in part be evaluated by looking at their levels of flexibility and restrictiveness.  LEED is a fairly flexible system, with owners and designers choosing which credits to focus on and what level of certification they want to achieve.  LEED can also be considered an “aspirational” system that sets high benchmarks for motivated projects to aspire for.  IGCC does have flexibility, but less so than LEED, and it also has more restrictions.  It is intended as a mandatory performance based code, again setting more of a floor while LEED will continue to establish a higher level of optional performance.

The biggest challenge with this latest evolution in green standards, codes, and rating systems appears to be education—education of builders, designers, and enforcement officials.  It will be interesting to see how the communication around this increases over the course of the next year and how the industry responds.