selophane.blog

On tuesday the DCist ran an article about the National’s Stadium being the first LEED rated stadium in the country and the general move of DC towards what may be perceived as “Green Architecture”. (Click here for the article) I feel that this article fails to clarify some key issues and understand a few things about the difference between “Green Architecture” and LEED. First, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) to quote their own website is “a 501(c)(3) non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings accessible to everyone within a generation.” This group is not affiliated with any state government, and I feel that it bears questioning the merits of requiring new construction to comply with a private non-profit agency (as DC is doing), instead of a public agency. This smells a little to strongly of privatization for me, but thats another post for another day. Second, the LEED system is a method of ranking a building based on points for certain qualifications. This system does not weight any points higher than others; using solar panels to account for 20% of your used power is worth the same as providing showers and bike racks or choosing a site [...]