You’re proud of your new home and want to tell the world about what you’ve done. Consider having your home certified to be as green as you made it.

 Since its founding in 1991, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has emerged as a recognized and respected leader among green professionals. To help the construction industry define green building, the USGBC discovered a need for a method of scoring buildings to evaluate their “greenness.” Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is the USGBC’s Green Building Rating System, and it defines a voluntary guideline for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.

LEED has quickly become the industry standard for green building in the United States. Today, LEED buildings can be found in 24 countries and all 50 states. As of this writing, LEED has been adopted by 9 federal agencies, 20 states, and 49 U.S. city and county governments as the green standard in the construction of all municipal facilities.

There are currently over 30,000 LEED Accredited Professionals trained in this rating system and nearly 3,000 buildings on their way to certification. This represents about 8% to 10% of the U.S. new construction market, and this number is growing quickly.

Still in its early stages, some people have found LEED to be confusing and difficult to implement. Although LEED lists prescriptive requirements, there are no practical applications listed. A member of the construction team is left to guess how to meet the qualifications of each LEED point. The USGBC had enough foresight to understand this, and the LEED system is structured to be open ended and consensus based. The system is continually being refined, and draft versions are left open for comment and debate. In the near future, LEED will simply get better and better.

The LEED system works by dividing the building into six categories:

• Sustainable sites
• Water conservation
• Energy and atmosphere
• Materials and resources
• Indoor environmental quality
• Green design innovations

It lists opportunities for a building to earn points in each of these categories. The final number of points determines the green level of the building — Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum.

Tip: The benefits for getting your home LEED certified include the following:

• Having a LEED-certified home increases the value of the home.
  

• A LEED-certified home attracts potential buyers to your home.
  

• Tax breaks, expedited permitting, and other perks may be available for a LEED-certified building. (Ask your local building department for more information.)
  

Warning: The costs to get your home LEED certified may discourage you from making the effort. Costing anywhere from a few thousand dollars up to $10,000 or more, LEED certification is expensive.  ....read more