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Bringing the right people to the table at the onset and aligning goals can save project teams valuable time and resources. Requirements in the Integrative Process (IP) section encourage and reward finding connections between different building systems and processes. The strategies built into LEED often accomplish more than just one thing, and with this opening dialogue, projects can capitalize on synergies.

LEED projects reduce energy usage and encourage the use of renewable energy, fostering efficiency, value and resilience.

The Water Efficiency (WE) credit category addresses water use holistically in ways that align with the project type, supporting best practices in indoor use, outdoor use, specialized uses and metering. 

LEED changes the paradigm for how decisions are made about materials that go into the buildings we spend so much of our time in by giving new information to decision makers.

• Usage: Within the Materials and Resources (MR) section, instead of saying a product is good or bad based on one attribute, e.g. recycled content, LEED enables project teams to have a more robust dialogue with manufacturers about optimizing around environmental, social and health impacts and better understand trade-offs. This category is designed to consider the entire life-cycle of the building, from extraction and manufacturing, to transport, operations, and maintenance and eventually the end of life.
• Life-cycle: Whole building life-cycle assessment encourages the architect to work with the structural engineer to investigate opportunities to reduce the embodied energy of materials by right-sizing the building’s structure. There can be as much as a 20-30 percent positive impact on the life cycle of the building by looking at bay sizing and slab depth. This is important because as buildings become more and more operationally efficient, the embodied impact of materials gets proportionally larger.
• Transparency: Environmental product declarations and material ingredient reporting tools, like Health Product Declarations, provide architects and designers more information on the contents in products and the manufacturing process. EPDs address how products are made, their material ingredients, and other tools provide information about who makes them. These three together address the triple bottom line and give architects a more complete set of information by which to select products.

By providing this information, manufacturers can better differentiate the progress they’ve made and demonstrate that improvement.

The first step toward environmental performance is selecting a good location.

For owners, proximity to existing utilities and street networks avoids the cost of bringing this infrastructure to the project site. Locating in vibrant, livable communities makes the building a destination for residents, employees, customers and visitors and enables the building’s occupants to contribute to the area’s economic activity, creating a good model for future development. A new section developed for LEED v4, Location and Transportation (LT), emphasizes more advanced performance metrics � walking distance instead of straight-line radius, trip counts instead of transit stops, absolute rather than relative parking requirements and bicycle networks in addition to bicycle storage.

A building’s impact is not restricted to what is inside it.

Strategies under Sustainable Sites (SS) address impacts by rewarding decisions about the environment surrounding the building, and emphasizing the vital relationships among buildings, ecosystems and ecosystem services. They focus on restoring project site elements, integrating the site with local and regional ecosystems, and preserving the biodiversity on which natural systems rely.

AGÕæÈË°Ù¼ÒÀÖ¹ÙÍøÈë¿Ús and spaces with good indoor environmental quality protect the health and comfort of building occupants. Going a step beyond, high-quality indoor environments also work to improve the building’s value, enhance productivity, decrease absenteeism and reduce liability for building designers and owners.

Because some environmental issues are particular to a locale, we, with the help of our community leaders around the world, have identified distinct environmental priorities by area and the credits that address those issues. Teams are rewarded for pursuing and achieving existing LEED credits that address issues specific to their projects' location. The Regional Priority (RP) credits encourage project teams to focus on their local environmental priorities, and there are six LEED v4 credits for every location.

Sustainable design strategies and measures are constantly evolving and improving. New technologies are continually introduced to the marketplace, and up-to-date scientific research influences building design strategies.

The purpose of the Innovation (IN) category is to recognize projects for innovative building features and sustainable building practices and strategies.

LEED has become a common language of best practices in buildings worldwide. LEED v4 recognizes regional context, incorporating regional and local equivalent standards or programs usable to achieve the same credit intent. Additionally, metric units have been included in all tools and resources. View additional guidance for project teams around the world.