Cost and Red Tape Hamper Colleges' Efforts to Go Green

They find ways to achieve sustainability without the official stamp

Related materials

Text: How One High Achiever Earned Platinum

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines Universities Must Disclose More Data on Animal Research A court settlement requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make public more information about research on animals, prompting some academic researchers to worry about further attacks by animal-rights extremists. 2-Year Colleges Streamline Student Aid and Focus on Counseling For Provost Who Fled Lebanon, U. of Dayton Is His 'Village' Letters Home From World War II Soldiers Are Found in College Basement

By SCOTT CARLSON

The private, nonprofit Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program has become synonymous with green construction, and has kick-started a national conversation about energy efficiency, recycled building materials, and healthy work environments. Even people who know very little about green building know about LEED, as it is commonly known, as a kind of shorthand for environmental achievement.

In higher education, where sustainability is a hot issue, LEED certification is often a visible symbol of a college's commitment. Since LEED began in 2000, more than 1,500 college projects have been registered in the LEED program, the bulk of those in the past couple of years.

But some college officials are raising questions about the process of LEED certification. Some say it emphasizes less-important priorities in building. Others believe the certification is costly and a pain. They think they can follow LEED's principles to build green, without having to go through the expense and hassle of certifying.

"The vast majority of our clients, who seek us to design them very sustainable buildings, ultimately decide not to pursue LEED certification," says Ellen Watts, a principal at Architerra, a Boston-based architecture firm that specializes in green design and serves some colleges. Ms. Watts will not name her clients, but notes that only two of about 10 current customers, neither of them colleges, are going for the certification.

Most balk at the cost of certification, which is $50,000 for the smallest building her firm is designing. "There are a lot of things that money could buy that could make the project more energy efficient or educationally sustainable," Ms. Watts says. "I feel a moral responsibility as an architect to keep LEED front and center in the discussion. I stop short of forcing anyone's hand when it comes to spending $50,000 to $100,000."

The U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization founded in 1993, devised LEED to encourage commercial builders to incorporate more green practices and to get more people talking about energy efficiency, recycled components, and healthy buildings that feature natural light and materials low in toxins. Its certification levels are based on a point system: Use wood from sustainably managed forests, get a point. Use low-toxin paints on the walls, get another point, and so on. Builders can earn up to 69 points; projects are awarded basic LEED certification at 26 points, a silver rating at 33 points, a gold at 39 points, and platinum, the highest ranking, at 52 points. The points were originally arranged so that builders who had no inclination to go green could pick up easy points — by, say, installing a bike rack, worth one point. Getting halfway there on easy points might inspire them to shoot for certification and take on more-challenging green-building features, or so the strategy went.

And it seems to have worked. Brendan Owens, a vice president at the U.S. Green Building Council who supervises the point system, says LEED's popularity is the result of that delicate balance between market acceptance and technical rigor.

The key part of the certification, where some of the program's expense comes in, is the checking of all the points by third-party consultants. Some architects and builders estimate the price of certification at $1,000 to $2,000 per point, which has added up to more than $100,000 for some colleges. An official at the building council says the cost is usually much lower — $12,000 to $22,000 — and that it will continue to fall as more consultants learn more about green building. The council pockets just $450 to $600 per registered building, which doesn't even cover the cost of processing the paperwork.

The paperwork can be considerable. In 2006, Cape Cod Community College opened a building that earned a LEED gold certification. "I have the binder that we submitted for certification, and if you drop it on your foot, you would break it," says Michael R. Gross, the college spokesman. The documentation and certification cost the college between $20,000 and $30,000. Mr. Gross says Cape Cod is committed to building green, but the college is still mulling whether to certify its next building. "The time and related costs are of great concern."

Some institutions decide that the cost and hassle are too much. Colorado State University at Fort Collins will shoot for LEED gold standards in some $400-million in construction now planned, but the university will not seek certification on any of it. Brian Chase, director of facilities at Colorado State, says the certification could cost as much as $100,000 for one of the larger buildings, and he would rather use that money to buy green features.

"We feel we know what the LEED standards are" and how to evaluate and interpret them, Mr. Chase says. "It makes sense to us to put the money back into the building rather than get a certificate." The state of Colorado recently passed a law requiring public construction to meet the equivalent of LEED gold, but certification is not required.

At Stanford University — which is planning a new $400-million science-and-engineering quadrangle — faculty members, administrators, and architects had a different concern about LEED: They felt it didn't go far enough to recognize some of the innovative green-building features they wanted.

So they made up their own rating system, largely based on LEED, with some elements borrowed from another green-building program called Labs21.

Isaac Campbell, a principal at Boora Architects who helped design the rating system and plan the quad, said his clients at Stanford had priorities in energy savings and water conservation. One can get a platinum rating in LEED without trying to get all the points in the energy or water categories. "Those whose priorities focus on cost will frequently push for the least costly points to achieve the desired rating for the project," he said. "This was viewed as a potential compromise and risk to our client's program goals. They did not want their goals in energy or water savings to be optional."

The environmental-science building, the first in the quad, which recently opened, went through extensive climate modeling and will rely on aggressive strategies for natural ventilation, which may not have been recognized by LEED, Mr. Campbell said. Stanford also takes extraordinary measures to transplant and save its treasured live oaks, which go above and beyond guidelines in the LEED system.

The downside of Stanford's own system, Mr. Campbell readily acknowledges, is that "it doesn't mean anything to anybody except the people in my office and the people at Stanford."

Mark of Distinction

The LEED brand is indeed powerful, as other projects at Colorado State and Stanford show. Despite administrators' problems with the price of LEED at Colorado State, one academic building now under way will get certification — because the students, who are paying for the building through student fees, demanded it. At Stanford, Boora Architects is working on a business building in another part of the campus, and the attitude about LEED is very different compared with the science-quad project. "They are dead set on a LEED-platinum building," Mr. Campbell says.

The LEED image is not just for the wealthiest institutions. Ohlone College, in California, is seeking a platinum rating on a health-sciences building that just opened. Douglas Treadway, president of the two-year institution, says that a platinum rating would be important for the college's image, which places an emphasis on sustainability.

The power of the brand comes through the certification process, the very thing that makes LEED too expensive for some. That third-party verification is an important check that can prevent "greenwashing" — or selling something as green when it is not — and ensure that a building is "getting the miles per gallon it's supposed to," says Robert J. Koester, a professor of architecture and director of the Center for Energy Research, Education, and Service at Ball State University. He has heard anecdotes about LEED certifying in which auditors have found components that were installed incorrectly or heating units that were not as efficient as manufacturers claimed.

More important than branding, perhaps, is what LEED can do to protect the design of a building project, he says. Striving for LEED certification can moderate cost-cutting administrators whose decisions might hurt the long-term performance of a building. Buildings inevitably go through "value engineering," in which elements deemed too expensive or extravagant are axed.

"Frequently, value engineering is couched from the point of view of years' payback," with college administrators taking a pessimistic view of energy-saving features that pay off in the long run, says Mr. Koester. He adds that administrators often expect a payback on building elements that they would never expect from, say, a college endowment.

Today's well-designed green buildings often have heating, cooling, lighting, and electrical systems that work in concert: A building that relies on natural light might need less indoor light, which leads to less heat in the building, which reduces load on the cooling system, and so on. When administrators start eliminating parts of those systems, Mr. Koester says, the whole building can be thrown out of balance.

With points and certification at stake, LEED can highlight a monetary value or public-relations value on a "green," or planted, roof, a superefficient but expensive heating-and-cooling system, or additional insulation, he says.

Ms. Watts, the architect in Boston, has found this true in her own practice. She can think of half a dozen instances where projects sat on the cusp of a gold rating. Those institutions that were paying for certification — like Clark University, which earned a gold rating on a building her firm designed — took extra steps to make sure the building had enough green features to get the gold.

"We're a competitive society, sports-oriented, and high scores get us jazzed," she says. "That can help play into a client's fund-raising efforts, it can stimulate student discussion, and it can also spur the design team to consider things that they aren't focused on without the scoring."

Point Discrepancies

But some sustainability advocates find a troubling focus on points, and they see problems with the way the points are weighted. A common complaint, for example, notes that LEED offers one point to a builder who maintains 75 percent of the walls, floors, and roof of an existing structure, and also one point to a builder who installs a bike rack and changing room for bicycle commuters. Saving the building — with all of its "embodied energy," or the fuel that formed the foundation and walls — should be worth more, they say.

Walter Simpson, the energy officer at the State University of New York at Buffalo, says that point inequity can encourage builders to chase after the cheapest, easiest points and to put up a building that is LEED certified but essentially no more green than a conventional building.

"I call that approach the LEED-checklist approach," he says, adding that that path has been taken in LEED-certified buildings at his own university. "For example, we got a point for having an electric-car recharging station in front of our building," he says. "Well, there are no electric cars here. The charger has never been used in the five years it's been there. It was a cheap point to get."

Mr. Simpson is a supporter of LEED and says colleges should certify their buildings, but he believes that LEED standards should be made more stringent and that colleges should set higher ratings as a standard for construction. Like many campuses, Buffalo has set LEED silver as its minimum standard, which is the same minimum standard prescribed for all colleges that sign the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment.

The U.S. Green Building Council is now working on a new version of LEED — one that will respond to some of the critics' concerns. Officials there say the new version may be based on a 100-point system, in which easy efforts are worth less than more-demanding ones.

The new version of LEED will also put more of an emphasis on criteria that are relevant to the most pressing environmental issues, like climate change or water conservation. And the new version will offer some credits relevant to regional issues, like efforts to conserve water in the Southwest or disperse smog in the Northeast.

As for the certification costs, council officials believe they will come down in time, as green-building practices become more broadly accepted. However, the council is experimenting with a "portfolio program" that may help lower certification costs. The program allows builders to go through certification on a building type, building feature, or sustainability program, then apply that certification to other buildings.

"The idea is that you would be able to prototype building types and therefore streamline the documentation and certification of buildings," says Melissa Gallagher-Rogers, who manages the higher-education sector of the U.S. Green Building Council.

For example, a college in the portfolio program would certify its green cleaning practices once, but get credit for that feature in all of its buildings that are striving for LEED certification, without having to pay for redundant vetting. The program was originally designed for commercial entities that build the same structure over and over again. Seven higher-education institutions are experimenting with the portfolio program: American, Emory, and Syracuse Universities, the University of Florida, and the University of California campuses at Irvine, Merced, and Santa Barbara.

But the cost of certification should not be such a major concern in the first place, say observers of the LEED program. It is a small percentage of the overall cost of a building — "pennies a square foot," says Mr. Koester of Ball State. And the work and expense that go into auditing and commissioning should be a standard part of construction, say officials at the U.S. Green Building Council.

"If you are going to go to the point where you are going to call it 'LEED like' or 'modeled after the LEED standards,' wouldn't you require some proof from your architects and your builders anyway?" asks Ms. Gallagher-Rogers. "By the time you have that documented proof, you're almost to the point of having a LEED-certified building."