The Impacts of LEED Sustainability Efforts
There are many quantifiable results regarding LEED sustainability efforts. However, there are still some which are difficult to measure, and the criteria are based on factors that vary from project to project. If you are interested in calculating how cost-effective your LEED efforts will be over the lifetime of your building or how high your potential ROI may be if you sell your building, you should speak with the Burnham LEED consulting team. We can help you ascertain the financial and/or environmental benefits of your LEED sustainability efforts.
Keep in mind while looking at any numbers that the financial benefits of different efforts vary drastically from project to project. However, those numbers can provide you with an idea of what you can expect or hope to achieve when you employ various green building strategies in your project. According to the USGB, buildings that are LEED-accredited with Energy Star status have a rate of return of at least twenty percent. As more and more projects rely on LEED standards, older non-LEED certified buildings will lose value, and the LEED buildings will gain as much as a thirty percent return on their investment. In addition to financial benefits, there are other benefits that are vastly important although they are not as easy to quantify. These benefits include things like improved worker health or positive environmental effects. According to a study done by Greg Kats in 2003, the additional building costs required to garner the twenty percent return would only cost contractors an additional two percent in building costs.
Several LEED consulting professionals have studied the impact of LEED sustainability measures in some Portland buildings. They discovered that when a $60,000 investment was used to make an existing building ‘greener’, the building’s operators would save $250,000 in energy costs over a twenty-five year time period. In addition to saving nearly $10,000 a year, the building which had a green roof engendered air pollution benefits that were equal to taking 70 cars off the roads. Analysts place a $90,000 value on that effect.
Without a doubt, LEED sustainability efforts will make your building project friendlier to the planet. However, they will also gain you a substantial monetary return on your investments. Our LEED consulting team has vast experience working under LEED guidelines, and we look forward to helping you figure out what to implement and at what cost for what return.
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Tags: LEED, LEED Certification, LEED Consulting, Sustainablity. LEED Accredited professional