What is LEED?

The developer of Solera Apartments, Zocalo Community Development, has made a principled commitment to reduce the impact its projects have on the earth and its environment. To facilitate the construction of highly sustainable buildings, Zocalo uses the US Green Building Council’s LEED Certification program. 

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard that provides third party verification of a building’s sustainability. The LEED system can apply to all building types from commercial to residential and follows the full lifecycle of the building from design and construction to location and tenant comfort. Other sustainable building rating systems do exist however most other systems are not as rigorous or as popular; as of December 2008 over 2,100 buildings have been certified under the USGBC rating systems. There are nine total LEED rating systems:

• New Construction

• Existing Buildings

• Commercial Interiors

• Core & Shell

• Schools
• Retail
• 
Healthcare

• Homes
• 
Neighborhood Development

Solera will be certified under the “New Construction” rating system – nationally 1,421 buildings have been certified under this category. This system is broken into four levels of certification: Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Zocalo’s RiverClay Condos project, completed in May 2008, was the Rocky Mountain Region’s first LEED-Certified multi-family project; it was certified at the Silver level.

The level of a building’s certification is determined by a point system. For New Construction, points/credits are allotted based on performance in six categories:

• Sustainable Sites
• Water Efficiency
• Energy and Atmosphere
• Materials and Resources
• Indoor Environmental Quality
• Innovative Design

Sixty-nine total credits are available for a given project. Solera will seek to improve upon Zocalo’s RiverClay building and achieve LEED Gold Certification, which requires a minimum of thirty-nine points. Here is the breakdown of points based on LEED Version 2.2:

• Platinum (52-69 points)
• Gold (39-51 points)
• Silver (33-38 points)
• Certified (26-32 points)

As we move forward, we will use this blog to update you on our progress under each LEED category and let you know the credits we are pursuing. We have a set plan for reaching our goal and will walk you through our decisions as we add new posts throughout the construction process.

For more information about LEED certification, please visit the USGBC website at www.usgbc.org.