Boston — College planners and architects concerned about protecting older buildings on their campuses were cautioned Thursday that “sustainability has taken the moral high ground from preservation,” and that some preservation advocates spend too much time griping about their waning influence and not enough figuring out how to make historic structures practical in an era of higher energy costs and lower carbon footprints.

The warning came from Henry Moss, an architect with Bruner/Cott, which was responsible for a high-profile Harvard University project that reclaimed an old generating station and made it a university office building with a LEED platinum rating (right). He spoke here at a conference for Boston-area colleges that was sponsored by the Boston Preservation Alliance.

Mr. Moss said the influential LEED standards for sustainability are “weak on historic structures,” in part because they don’t do a good job of accounting for what’s known as “embodied energy” — energy expended in the past to construct existing buildings. “In fact nobody knows anything about embodied energy,” said Mr. Moss, adding that it was amazing how little research had been done to figure out how much embodied energy is squandered when an existing building is demolished so a new one can be built in its place. LEED is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program of the United States Green Building Council.

It’s also difficult to weigh energy savings against the value of retaining a building’s historic appearance, he said. That’s one of the “second-generation questions” about sustainability that a college faces as it progresses from building a single “trophy” green building toward making its entire campus more sustainable.

He also warned that as buildings’ sustainable systems become more complex, they will present additional challenges. “The competence of the professionals that are now working on these projects is really being stretched — it’s being stretched right along with the competence and knowledge of the project managers,” Mr. Moss said. “Where we used to do one or two new things in a project, we’re now doing 10 or 15. With that level of innovation, the risk in these projects is definitely increasing.”

For instance, he said Harvard University now has at least a half-dozen buildings with geothermal heating and cooling systems, and “each one of those has generated new lessons — I’m avoiding the term ‘head-banging problems.’”

He also said that colleges would need to rely more on the commissioning process, in which engineers take a close look at a new building’s systems after they’re installed to make sure they’re running as efficiently as possible. And he said colleges would have to train their maintenance and cleaning staffs carefully so they know exactly how each new building functions. The questions colleges need to ask, he said, are: “Did you get the building you bought? And will people be able to operate it once it’s handed over?”

The good news, he said, is that LEED’s overseers are working to improve how the standards are applied to campuses and other multibuilding areas, and to neighborhoods. The changes, he said, will “force a comprehensive approach on the part of the commissioning institution,” rather than encouraging those one-time trophy projects. He said the changes would also “allow you not to have to repeat the paperwork every time you do a project.”

“I don’t care what anybody tells you — it costs $100,000 to get a major scheme certified,” said Mr. Moss. He added that after project managers have done several such projects, “they ask, Wouldn’t we rather spend that $100,000 on the building?” —Lawrence Biemiller