In many states, hunters not only have the right to go deer hunting after Thanksgiving, they have state and national legislators joining them at hunting camps for the beer, cheer and deer. When our elected officials are behind something, nothing seems to be able to stop it.
However, if a “National Association for Better Deer” started making demands on how hunters shot and processed the deer that continually got tougher every year, these same elected officials would start sending bills to their state legislatures banning the NABD from practicing in their state.
This is what is happening to LEED. This 500 pound hulking Gorilla is starting to believe its own hype that it is the de facto standard with which to build all commercial buildings in every state as well as a growing number of homes. Ohio has had enough of this growing beast brushing aside other building standards and has recently introduced a bill to ban LEED from public projects…Ouch.
If it looks like Ohio will be successful in their attempt to ban LEED, watch for LEED officials to spend time and money opposing this bill by trying to strike fear in the hearts of all the poor folks that will have to work in the new slums that will be built in Ohio without LEED’s kind and caring guidelines. LEED officials will start blaming everyone but themselves for their problems.
Here’s the story:
The
as a political battleground with a new fight emerging over the use of LEED in
public projects.
It’s looking like Ohio, a state long recognized as a pivotal
political battle ground in national elections, may have a new legislative
dust-up brewing after two state senators put forth a resolution in the state
senate last week that seeks to ban the use of LEED in public construction.
Will the Buckeye state buck the nation’s most visible building performance
ratings system? While that’s up for debate, we do know that we now have to
change
to orange in our map tracking the status of pro-LEED and anti-LEED state
policies.
The bone Ohio Senators Joe Uecker, R-Loveland, and Tim
Schaffer, R-Lancaster, have to pick with LEED is a now-familiar argument: that
LEED does not follow American National Standards Institute (ANSI) consensus procedures
and therefore should not be used as a rating system of record. However, unlike
some other states that have moved to ban the use of LEED in public projects
this year, which danced around specifically naming LEED, the Ohio resolution,
SCR 25, takes on LEED v4 directly, asserting that LEED v4 should no longer
be used by Ohio state agencies and government entities and that the state’s
Office of Energy Services begin an immediate review of alternative rating
systems, codes, and standards.
From an observer’s standpoint, it’s beginning to look like a
national game of whack-a-mole for USGBC, having tackled similar challenges in
and
In the southern states, the battle seemed to be more about the use of timber in
LEED, as the Atlantic Cities reported in August, asking “Why Are Some
States Trying to Ban LEED Green Building Standards?” In
ANSI processes—is the same position taken by the American
High-Performance Buildings Council during the multiple rounds of debate
over LEED v4, as well as during the review period by the U.S. General Services
Administration over what rating system should be used by the federal
government.
One of the elements at play in the debate on LEED and its
use, or lack thereof, of ANSI processes is the amount of transparency that is
given into how LEED is modified and updated. However, in countering the rising
anti-LEED legislation, supporters of the rating system contend that it’s
concern about a different sort of transparency that is driving such
proposals. In an Op-Ed in Thursday’s Columbus Dispatch, Tyler Steele,
the chairman of the USGBC’s Central Ohio chapter asserts that the
is the work of an out-of-state consortium of chemical companies that is
“upset that the latest version of LEED would make occupants aware of the
chemical ingredients within their building materials.” This should sound
familiar by now: It’s the same chain of thought that led Skanska
its membership from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in July.
In gearing up its opposition to the proposed resolution, the
building community is framing the debate around one central argument: LEED
works, a refrain the USGBC has adopted. Within this framework, the
counterargument is focusing on green schools, since
the country. In his O-Ed, Steele notes that “since adopting LEED,
have outperformed baseline energy performance by 34 percent, almost 200,000
tons of construction waste has been diverted from landfills and occupants
report improved educational outcomes.”
Search #LEEDworks and #greenschools on Twitter to tap into
the campaign. In addition, a campaign has been set up at change.org by
USGBC’s advocacy team to petition Ohio Senate President Keith Faber to oppose
SCR 25.
Modcoach predicted this would be LEED’s approach to kill the bill:
UPDATE: Despite legislative challenges,
Carolina
support LEED, as does
which faced a similar political challenge, says USGBC director of technical
policy Jeremy Sigmon. The challenge in
he notes, is “a single industry’s attempt to tear down LEED when they
disagree with one or two credits. Most industries innovate to contribute to
LEED—the chemical industry is choosing to lobby.” However, he
notes,
rating system and revoking its use in public buildings would be “akin to
back on green building leadership.”
