So what does it all mean?  It means that to get the credits required for building projects, your materials will need to be sourced locally – stone, sand, etc.   Hello local sand and gravel pits and mining – about as welcome in California as Jack Frost and New Yorkers.  LEED is not unique to California.  LEED now encompasses over 14,000 projects in over 50 States and over 1. 5 billion square feet.  LEED means using recycled materials; it means localized sourcing; it means limits on emissions and effluents, and it means costly retrofitting for existing buildings. The ordinance would affect new commercial buildings larger than 5,000 square feet, residential buildings over 75 feet in height, and renovations on buildings larger than 25,000 square feet – in other words, just about every building or any import.  

The argument for LEED-certified buildings is as you would expect.  Green Buildings lower operating costs and increase asset value.  They reduce waste sent to landfills and conserve energy and water.  Green Building environments are healthier and safer for occupants, reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions and excessive water usage.  While more expensive at first, the bet is two fold: (1) Green Buildings will be cheaper and more efficient to run, and (2) Green Materials will reach cost parity with conventional materials as the standards become more prevalent.  Regulatory schemes like LEED are conceived to engender new behavioral patterns, which result in new normative conduct.  Green regulations, voluntary or mandated, are designed to promote environmentally conscious decision-making and to eventually decrease the carbon footprint that buildings impress upon the earth.  But until those regulations result in that desired conduct, they must have teeth and, right now, LEED is toothless. 

Yet toothless can be attractive.   True that until LEED becomes law - through ordinances like that under consideration in San Francisco - legal penalties for non-compliance cannot be enforced. But is actual enforcement necessary?  Faster permitting for LEED accredited building designs have certainly turned a few heads.  Evidence of lower energy costs have already opened a few pocketbooks and the growing parity between green and let’s say “brown” material designs are all moving the market towards greener pastures.  These factors all conspire to promote LEED. And don’t discount public opinion.  Brown buildings are simply unattractive to the green generation, and the other way around.  So, even if toothless, LEED is still attractive.  In fact, if you are not LEED certified, your building may soon go fallow.