Special Report: 4.2.2009

Posted by TED Magazine on Thursday, April 02, 2009

Bad Stuff About LEED (Part 2 of NFM+T coverage)

By Joe Salimando

One of my favorite Saturday Night Live bits, from the 1970s, was Garrett Morris portraying Chico Escuela, the second baseman from Latin America and the author of the book Bad Stuff About The Mets.

Obviously, this report’s title comes courtesy of Chico. Note that I’m not anti-green, or even, really, anti-LEED. By the way, LEED = Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a high-profile program of the U.S. Green Building Council.

You need to know about LEED.

First, LEED has six sections. Only one tackles building energy consumption; electrical folks might have problems with that. A citizen of America (or a resident of Planet Earth) might share your concerns. After all, reducing energy consumption is THE point, isn’t it? How could that be only a piece of LEED?

Additionally (as noted previously in this space), the program is about DESIGN (that’s what the D stands for, isn’t it?). LEED isn’t about building performance. So you can design a building with all kinds of neat “intent.”

But if the building is operated in such a way as to disregard the initial direction, the net results may NOT be a very green facility.

A Session in Baltimore

At the National Facilities Maintenance & Technology conference and show in Baltimore, an attendee could pick among several LEED sessions. I chose one with a very boring title: “LEED-EB O&M Update.”

Turns out, thanks to dumb luck, this was an excellent choice. The speaker was Craig Sheehy, who is entitled to put the letters “CPM” and “LEED AP” after his name. He’s the president/CEO of Envision Realty Services. (If you click through, you’ll notice the company’s slogan, “The Green Building Experts.”)

[What is “LEED EB O&M,” anyway? EB = existing building. O&M = operations and maintenance. Follow the link to see the USGBC site’s info on the subject.]

What made this an excellent investment of time is the format Sheehy chose for his presentation. He went through all six of the LEED elements, one by one. He reviewed each segment within each element, disclosing how many points one could earn—and how to do just that.

And he discussed (in as much detail as one can fit into a 50-minute presentation):

• which points were easy to get,
• those one could earn with a reasonable effort, and
• others (which were just too hard to pursue).

Above: Slide #10 (of 67) from Sheehy’s excellent presentation. 
“Sustainable Sites” is one of six LEED elements.

What Sheehy provided was a “field guide” of sorts, shortcuts to earnings a LEED certification for a building. Follow the advice embedded in his 67 slides, and shared readily in his words, and you would be able to keep the cost of earning such a certification to an absolute minimum, while driving your LEED EB point total up into the range which you desire.

“It’s really not that tough,” Sheehy said.

At least once, he noted that you can earn points via the simple expedient of adopting prescribed “policies and procedures.” There are 17 of these embedded in the LEED EB program, he said. “If you’re going for LEED-EB, you’ve got to have the policies and procedures” in place, he summarized.

Keep in mind, Sheehy wasn’t speaking to a group of environmentalists (or even a bunch of electrical contractors). He was talking to an audience which he (and the rest of us) presumed consisted of building owners, managers, and maintainers.

A problem you might have with some of what’s above: You can “adopt” policies and procedures in the three-month LEED review period, and then fling them out the window after winning a “green building” (LEED) certification.

At one point during his remarks, Sheehy talked about the need to do certain things during the three-month period; it was stuff that, he indicated, you might not necessarily sustain.

One more stomach-wrenching piece of Sheehy’s presentation came when he talked about solar photovoltaics. “I haven’t found a building that can get a payback [on a solar PV installation] in less than 17 years,” he said. This is quite daunting, considering:

1. The guy’s company has a slogan, “The Green Experts.”
   
   
2. His company is based in California.
   
   
3. We’re talking about USGBC, LEED, etc., here.

...But solar PV gets tossed out the friggin’ window (excuse my French!).

But wait: He went on: “But we can buy green power. It’s a half-cent a kilowatt-hour premium [over the cost of a non-green kWh],” he said.

Apparently, in one’s quest to get LEED certification, spending that little bit extra to pay homage to the need to have green power is more economic than building installing building-integrated photovoltaics.

You get four LEED points for this!

Summary: Sheehy’s presentation was eye-opening on many levels. He shared a lot of information:

• Waterless urinals don’t hold up in well-used facilities (people throw things in the doggone things and they stop working, after which the smell factor comes into play).
  
  
• The cost (in California) for an energy audit averages about 10 cents per building square foot, although he’s recently gotten the price down to 5.6 cents per square foot.
  
  
• One LEED requirement, on solid waste, requires a building owner to go to tenants and collect data on what they’re doing. This might be practical if one has a single tenant, impossible in a multi-tenant high-rise.

  

Above & Below: The Green Seal booth on the NFM+T show floor "walked the walk" that various green exhibitors were talking. The literature rack (at right above, detail below) was assembled, at least in part, from a tire.

 

What might have bothered you about Sheehy’s presentation was not what he said, but the way the LEED program is set up. He came across (to me) as a guy playing by the rules. He was saying “Here’s what LEED-EB requires, and here’s how to get the best bang for the buck.”

One might have second thoughts about such an approach to “green,” but it’s impossible to find something wrong with what Sheehy recommended.

In the process, it became apparent that LEED is a game. And, of course, all games can be gamed. After listening to Sheehy, it became clear that the LEED process can be “played” without making a building all that much greener.

Another Session on LEED

Another session I attended was so awful that I’m skipping the name of the presenter, the title, and specifics. The person in front of the (very crowded) room was, to all evidence, anti-green, anti-LEED, and anti-sustainability.

Your humble reporter sat there, writing wildly errant stuff into his notebook. What was being said could only make one incredulous.

• First, it’s not the time to be anti-green. But if you must do that, make the case. Don’t slam the thing, take a breath, talk about it, and then slam it again.
  
  
• Next, do it with the facts.
  
  
• Finally, get the facts right.

At least six times (according to my notes) during the first 30 minutes of this presentation, this person said or indicated that LEED was a “government” program. That’s right, he said “government.”

If you don’t maintain the green standards of LEED, he said, “the government” will come back and audit you, and “they’ll take away your certification.”

Also, he spoke about a fee (which the USGBC charges) for expediting the LEED certification process. In other words: You can pay extra to have your application get ahead of others. “Only the government would charge you [an expedited] fee,” the speaker said.

Our presenter also noted that:

• “LEED certification is an additional cost.” No kidding? You mean there’s no free lunch? I’m taking my toys and going home.
  
  
• LEED “can increase costs.” This is essentially true, but the same as the above point. Apparently, those of us in the seats were big idiots, because this was repeated several times.
  
  
• “You can buy all [the green power that you want]...and you’ll have zero impact on the environment.” This is an interesting contention, but one might well argue this until well after the cows come home and not get to a resolution. Documentation from the speaker on this point: ZERO.
  
  
• Green buildings can be harmful. They can be built so tight that the folks inside can get “carbon monoxide poisoning.” This contention was repeated (at least twice in the presentation’s first 15 minutes). Actually, this is a possibility. As noted here more than a year ago, green homebuilders construct “tight” buildings, with infrequent air exchanges. They advise owners of the new homes to use less-toxic cleaning products!

At some point I had a revelation: This guy wasn’t anti-green. He had (literally) lost a piece of his brain. Literally seconds later, a woman rose to plead with the guy, telling him “the government” wasn’t at all involved in LEED, that it was a program put together by the USGBC, and that it was entirely voluntary.

Our speaker didn’t break stride. “I stand corrected,” he said, moving on to the next wrongheaded LEED critique.

That’s when I realized that my initial revelation was probably correct.

Next week: “Total light management” and more from NFM+T.

	Joe Salimando of EFJ Enterprises is a consultant, web content provider, and wordsmith based in Oakton, Va. To contact him, call 703-255-1428. See also The EleBlog.
Personal Disclaimer: The appearance of the ambling pachyderm is indicative of the writer’s obsession with elephants, not his political leanings.
IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS COLUMN REFLECTS ONLY THE OPINIONS OF ITS AUTHOR AND DOES NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OR POLICIES OF NAED, TED MAGAZINE, OR THE ADVERTISERS ON THE TEDMAG WEB SITE.