The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recently announced it will recognize energy and water requirements from the Living Building Challenge (the Challenge) green-building system within the LEED green-building program.
⨓USGBC and the International Living Future Institute, developers of the Living Building Challenge, share a common commitment and goal to transform the way we design, build, and operate our buildings,” Scot Horst, chief product officer, USGBC, said. “The Challenge plays an important role on the green-building-performance curve and is a complement to LEED.”
Horst added: “In the world of rating systems, there is a sense of competition between systems, and what we’re saying is that what matters is that people are doing good environmental work. We want to focus on them and create harmonization between systems.”
The move means Living Building Challenge energy and water requirements will be considered technically equivalent to LEED’s.