Energy Efficiency Problems in Some LEED Certified Buildings

Nowadays, Energy Efficiency is one of the most important issues that world is trying to solve. Building construction industry is involved in a major part of total annual energy consumption of every country. Consequently, finding new approaches to provide more energy efficient procedures in building construction has been taken into consideration. Therefore, the concept of green buildings came up and different green building rating systems have been developed in many countries all around the world.

In year 1998, United States Green Building Council (USGBC) developed a nationally accepted benchmark for green building industry named as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Generally, the main purpose of implementing LEED for assessing buildings was to assure the energy efficiency and environmentally sustainability of them. However, it has been observed that some LEED-certified buildings consume much more energy than similar non-certified ones. So, what is the point in implementing such rating system when there is no guarantee for the building to be more energy efficient? Why do some LEED-certified buildings consume more energy than the anticipated model?

For answering this question we may compare the energy consumption data of some LEED-certified buildings with each other. It seems that these inconsistencies are not completely caused by the suggested reasons such as lack of inter-operation between parties, changes in construction, Climate or equipment induced differences, etc. We think that there might be a problem in implementation practices. Finding the solution for this question needs more categorized comparison of the actual versus anticipated energy performance data, using statistical approaches. So, by comparing the data achieved from different buildings and comparing them in each dividend of energy consumption (such as plug loads, air conditioning, lighting systems, etc.) we can find were the implementation problem could be.