What is LEED?
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an internationally recognized green building certification system, which verifies that a building was designed to improve performance across metrics such as energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources. LEED also offers building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations, and maintenance solutions. Today the LEED certificate is highly regarded but rather complicated to present and deliver from the thousands of sensors. The need to generate an Automated LEED Certification, is necessary to be truly in control of a building’s performance.
Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED provides building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations, and maintenance solutions. Buildings are awarded points based on the extent various sustainable strategies are achieved. The more points awarded the higher the level of certification achieved from Certified, Silver, Gold, to Platinum.
The LEED certificate scoring
One hundred possible credit points are distributed across six credit categories: location and transportation, materials and resources, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, sustainable sites, and indoor environmental quality. Up to ten more points can be earned for innovation in design (6 points) and regional priority (4 points). Points are allocated based on the potential for good—more points go for actions with the least environmental impact and most human benefit.
Credits come in many different ways, some more involved than others. Project teams select the credits that fit best with their project, and that will help them reach their desired LEED certification. Location and transportation points can be awarded for locating in certain high priority neighborhoods, being near quality transit, installing bike facilities, and providing alternative-fuel stations for green vehicles, for example. Sustainable site credits include the provision of open space, light pollution reduction, rainwater management, and shade trees to reduce the “heat island.”
Data ment for improvement and optimization
Using efficient irrigation systems, installing low flow water fixtures, using a cooling tower and having good water metering systems are some of the options within the water use reduction metric. Energy and atmosphere credits can include optimizing energy performance, using and/or producing renewable energy sources, and participating in demand response programs. The sensors measure this data constantly and live, but the ability for traditional systems demands the manual reading of the sensors, which doesn’t allow real estate owners to use the copious amount of data on demand. An Automated Leed Certification would allow full control and overview to optimize in real-time.
Today many federal agencies and state and local governments reward LEED certification, which is becoming more sought in commercial markets by increasingly environmentally conscious companies. While the application process can be both time consuming and expensive, companies that view the investments over the life cycle of the building will find that not only will their actions be good for the planet, but good for their pockets as well. The challenge is to make this data available in real-time, for constant optimization and improvement.
A manual system going automatic
Today it requires operators to go out and manually read the sensor data from each individual building, but there is a new solution that allows the data to be in real-time and used to more than certification but also optimization. Idun ProptechOS analyses and collates all the sensor data automatically, allowing an Automated Leed Certification, thereby vastly reducing the number of man-hours required to complete the LEED certification, as well as the risk of human error.
Idun ProptechOS and ARC make it possible to fully automate the LEED-certification process. Certify-LEED, a new app, was developed using RealEstateCore and ProptechOS and a pilot batch of 29 buildings was successfully certified. Building automation, IoT, energy collection, and administrative systems act together and integrate smoothly using RealEstateCore and ProptechOS.
ARC – benchmarking your data
Arc is a digital platform that uses data to help measure and improve sustainability performance across the built environment, from buildings. Arc’s data-centric approach connects actions and tracks progress through a performance score that allows projects to track and benchmark progress.
Arc is the first-of-its-kind to track sustainability progress through a performance score to help drive continuous and incremental improvement. Arc scores create a holistic picture of the results of sustainability efforts at the building, portfolios, and community levels. Through the initial step of tracking data, Arc gives any project an immediate entry point to the world of performance measurement and certification, no matter where they are on their sustainability journey.
ProptechOS and Vasakronan
During 2019 Vasakronan, Idun, and ARC (U.S. Green Building Council) worked together to make it possible to fully automate the LEED-certification process. Certify-LEED, a new app, was developed using RealEstateCore and ProptechOS and a pilot batch of 29 buildings was successfully certified. If you can automate the process, additional benefits will not only cost savings and quality but your environmental footprint.
