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Plugging the holes in LEED certification to make it better

LEED is the green home certification system created and employed by the Green Business Council of USA. It is often criticized for not having proper mechanisms or taking the apt measures for keeping a tab on the level of energy usage over a long period of time. The system offers the LEED certification to a building based on the apparent performance, architecture and fixtures but does not consider the ways in which the residents use the building.

LEED certified Homes and energy usage

To judge the eco-friendliness of a building we must take its performance over a longer period of time which depends on taking the behavior of the users into account. The projected performance and the real performance of a building have been found to vary. LEED system of green building certification does not consider this and attracts criticism based on this approach.

The US Green Building Council has recently created a visual score board system to rank a house on the basis of its eco-friendliness. This system is called the Dynamic Plaque. The Green building Council has received help from the Ideo designing company on this project. The Dynamic Plaque will give score based on factors like energy, water usage, transportation, waste management and human experience.

prime motive of LEED Certification

The residents of a building can themselves check the present and previous performance of their home. They can also compare the performance of their building with other habitable structures.ย  They will have to submit the performance score of their building in the website of the UCGBC. They are also motivated to check their own performance as residents and owners of a building and submit the human performance score in the website. They can exchange suggestions for improving their performance.

The simple graphical manners in which the metrics of performance are presented help commoners understand them easily. The LEED Dynamic Plaque uses lots of colors for making the graph of performance. The interface is extremely helpful and user friendly. It shows you results of comparison between month-to-month increase or decrease in energy usage and water usage.

water management for LEED certification

The main goal is to make the common inhabitants and city dwellers more conscious about the performance of their homes so that they can curb the negative behaviors and decrease the wastage of energy and water. The plan is to get the Dynamic Plaque installed in at least 1000 buildings. At present the system is used only in 15 buildings.

Summary

LEED system of green building certification has some serious flaws. To address these problems, a house performance system has been created that considers the usage metrics for a more accurate environmental rating for a building.

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