USGBC Announces Abbreviated 7th Public Comment Period

Bill Walsh | April 01, 2013 | Policies

[April Fool's edition]

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has opened the seventh public comment period for the proposed update to its LEED Green Building program, LEED v4. The public comment periods allow the building community to view the most recent draft of the Building Product Disclosure and Optimization - Material Ingredients Credit and provide comments on any substantive changes.

In order to facilitate and expedite participation in the abbreviated 7th comment period, USGBC has initiated a new format. This format compresses the review and comment process into a single form that can also be used as a submittal to obtain the credit. These comments / submittals will reside in new LEED Information Bureaucracy, (LEED-LIBs) for retrieval by project teams.

Background

LEED v4 is the __________ [adj. and/or expletive] update to the LEED rating systems.

Intent

To ________ [verb] project teams that use healthier building materials. To [prefix] _____courage the use of products and materials for which life-cycle information is available and that have environmentally, economically, and socially preferable life-cycle impacts. To reward _________ [noun] for __________ [verb] the chemical ingredients in the product using an ________ [adjective] methodology and for selecting products verified to __________ [verb] and _______ [verb] harmful substances. To reward raw material manufacturers who produce products _________[verb] to have _________ [adjective] life-cycle impacts.

Requirements

There are seven (7) options for utilizing 23 programs in order to complete any of 19 reporting pathways to achieve varying ratios of the credit. This flexibility will __________________ [verb] project teams, ____________________ [verb] product manufacturers and _________________ [verb] the American Chemistry Council. Preliminary algorithmic projections indicate 46,664 potential combinations by which project teams may obtain this credit for each interior building material or component. Brendan Owens, VP, LEED Technical Development said: "While our critics will undoubtedly see the mark of the beast in that number, I personally see a palindrome. This is going to work, any way you look at it."

Please note, this Abbreviated 7th Public Comment Period is only open until 11:59 PM PST, today, April 1, 2013.