Green Building To-Do Lists for 2011

A Look at LEED Milestones and Green Building To-Do Lists for 2011

Dec 24, 2010 - Choices, choices, choices … To ruminate about the last year and the last decade or to talk about the great lineup we have this week. False choice really, I've got to talk about the lineup, but looking back over the new century's first decade and the last year is irresistible.

Of course, any green building summary of the first decade of the 21st century must begin and end with the introduction of the LEED Green Building Rating System. In under a decade, LEED has transformed one of the most important yet conservative industries on the planet. Not bad for what started with a bunch of volunteers and now boasts a professional industry numbering in the many tens of thousands.

Some may deride LEED as "just a list," but that would be like deriding a guitar as "just six strings" or the fact that there are "only" three primary colors. Such an over-simplified characterization simply misses the point, a point that is well articulated in the post by Richard Fuller and Anna Dengler entitled "LEED as a starting point." Just like the six strings on a guitar, the roughly eight prerequisites and 34 credits in the various LEED standards represent the defined starting point for building sustainability. If you want to mindlessly strum the six strings, there won't be silence … but there won't be music either. {continued}