The False Green God of LEED

Commentary

The Saanich municipality in B.C. desperately needs a new fire hall. In 2019, city council approved a $26-million replacement for its aging Fire Station #2, set to open in 2023. But because the city requires that all public buildings reach a “LEED” Gold or Platinum standard of environmental efficiency, the station was to be built using trendy mass timber construction. (LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.”) Five years later, ground had yet to be broken and the project was plagued by rapidly rising costs.

Switching to conventional concrete and steel construction offered a chance to keep the project close to its budget and timeline, a 2023 staff report revealed. But abandoning the wooden design meant “the project has the potential to not achieve LEED Platinum or even Gold.” Faced with the loss of their coveted LEED designation, Saanich city council decided to up the budget by more than 70 percent, to $44.6 million. It may be the most expensive fire hall ever constructed in Canada. And it’s still not open, running more than three years behind schedule.

What went wrong in Saanich? Part of the problem lies in the fanaticism of architects, builders, and politicians in worshipping at the green altar of LEED. It is a false god.

LEED was created in the late 1990s by the U.S. Green Building Council as a way to promote energy-efficient construction techniques. To receive a LEED plaque, a building must earn points for various environmental attributes. Over time, these points have expanded beyond high-efficiency furnaces and triple-glazed windows to include a variety of clearly political objectives, such as the promotion of electric cars, public transit, and “social health and equity.”

Since it first appeared in Canada in 2003, LEED certification has become the sina qua non of Canadian public infrastructure. The glory to be found in unveiling a LEED plaque is what lies behind the determination of Saanich city council to press on with its wooden fire hall despite delays and rising costs. LEED Gold is clearly more precious than taxpayer money.

So it may come as a surprise to its adherents that LEED status is no guarantee of green performance. Certification is awarded before construction and is based on modelling projections. As they say, actual results may vary.

A 2009 study by the National Research Council of Canada found LEED status was often irrelevant to observed building performance, given that “28-35% of LEED buildings used more energy than their conventional counterparts” (emphasis added). A 2020 report commissioned by B.C. Housing and the University of Victoria examined 10 social housing projects certified LEED Gold. Only two met or exceeded their modelled results. “The other eight consumed between 22.1% and 281.7% more energy than models predicted,” the report found.

Despite such worrisome performance misses, the allure of a shiny LEED plaque is often too much for virtue-signalling politicians to resist, and this often leads designers to make decisions based solely on the pursuit of LEED points. Leak-prone green roofs are a common result of this tendency.

In 2012, the John M. Harper Library in Waterloo, Ont., won the Ontario Library Association’s New Library Building Award on the strength of its LEED-friendly green roof. A library roof has one job: keep the books dry. From this perspective, Waterloo’s library has been a disaster. Due to “a substantial problem” with its green roof caused by winter leaks, the library had to install tarps and hoses on the ceiling to direct water away from the book stacks and into buckets. City staff declined repeated offers to comment on their award-winning library’s roof.

In addition to questionable performance, LEED-certified buildings also cost significantly more than their non-LEED peers. Studies suggest the additional construction costs range from 2–20 percent. And that doesn’t include fees charged by LEED-certified specialists to scrutinize project plans. According to Seattle-based architect Galen Page, “It costs US$250,000 on a fairly small project to just monitor and document the LEED process.”

While LEED continues to cast its spell over much of the design and building community, some common-sense politicians are finally starting to recognize the grift and take steps to protect taxpayers.

Last year, for example, Alberta’s Infrastructure Minister Martin Long announced his province would no longer require new public buildings to meet LEED criteria. In a statement to C2C Journal, he noted that “by removing the LEED certification requirements for new construction projects, we are reducing red tape and focusing on delivering infrastructure faster and in a more cost-effective way.”

Ditching LEED, Long figures, will save Albertans enough to cover the cost of two new schools at $40 million each. In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford’s government recently overruled a city of Toronto bylaw requiring green roofs on buildings of a certain size following widespread concern about the cost and practicality of the mandate.

Rather than chase LEED points, architect Page explained in an interview that he encourages his clients to focus on more practical matters. In particular, he avoids green roofs in all his plans. The best roof, he noted, is a sloped metal design that removes water and snow quickly and efficiently. It may not earn any LEED points, but it’s cheap and keeps the building underneath dry.

Greg Wilson, a professional engineer, muses on design and construction at @Libertastalks on YouTube and @Libertaswrites on X and Substack. The longer, original version of this story first appeared at C2CJournal.ca

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.