Sustainability and our company’s building: how much is LEED® certification worth?
As the tenant owner of our 25 plus-year-old office building, we wanted to make it as energy-efficient and sustainable as possible. So, a little over three years ago, we registered our office as a LEED® building site. This made official our intent to go through the process to obtain LEED-EB (Existing Building) certification status.
LEED stands for Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design. It is the proprietary program of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), which administers the program and approves the applications after a thorough review of the exhaustive process.
Being a small business, we have proceeded in a methodical fashion to make all of the necessary improvements to our 16,000-square-foot building. This summer, we got to the point where we thought the building was ready for a professional review to see if we could achieve LEED certification.
Here are just some of the projects we’ve completed:
- Sealed all exterior walls, inside and out
- Added R-60 insulation to the attic areas
- Developed an eco-friendly landscaping plan with no phosphorus fertilizers, limited use of herbicides/pesticides, installing indigenous plants that are more drought tolerant, eco-friendly sidewalk salt
- Stepped up our recycling and waste reduction efforts (weekly solid waste is approaching less than one cubic yard)
- Met with outside suppliers to reduce the amount of recyclable or solid waste they “send into our building” (e.g., we supply reusable delivery bags and containers; encourage minimal or no packaging for local deliveries)
- Eliminated all space heaters (one space heater can use $20-30 of electricity per month when used just during business hours. It is much more energy-efficient to adjust the thermostat, which has 12 different controllable zones)
- Installed Delta® electronic faucets, and water-reducing showerheads
- KitchenAid® ENERGY STAR® appliances (dishwasher, refrigerator)
- Motion-activated lighting in conference rooms and non-office space
- In the works: replacing bottled water for guests with reusable carafes of filtered water
We interviewed and engaged a consulting company to guide us through the LEED process, beginning with a required ENERGY STAR® energy audit. We were pleasantly surprised when we easily achieved ENERGY STAR® status. And we were even more surprised to learn that when we completed the few small items we had remaining on our punch list, we would qualify for LEED Silver.
Then, we received a bit of bad news: completing the certification process with the consulting firm would cost about $24,000.
We love knowing that our building is functioning at a pretty high standard. We thank LEED for giving us the roadmap to achieve this, and we thank our consultants for taking us through the initial process.
But the decision now focuses on determining the best use of that $24,000. Should we complete the process and proudly hang a plaque on the wall? Should we invest it back into the building? Or should we use it for completely unrelated needs?
We debated this issue for quite some time. After all, we are vocally committed to environmental stewardship and making buildings greener, more energy- and water-efficient, and more healthy and pleasant to occupy. Our final decision: skip the plaque and put the money to productive use in making the building a more sustainable place to work. We know this is ultimately what really matters.