How Many LEED Points Can You Earn?

When is single cactus plant better than whole-house lighting control? When it's part of the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) program.

If both the question and answer sound like riddles, it's because it is truly baffling. LEED-H, which launched in January 2008, uses the Home Energy Rating System (HERS) to determine a total number of points for a home.

The "reference score" for a home is 100 points. A zero-energy home would be 0 points for example. Thus, the lower the points, the better. So when a home "earns" LEED points, those points are actually being deducted from a starting point of 100. To be Energy Star-qualified, a home must have a HERS score of 85 points or lower.

Integrators can earn LEED points for a home in the categories of:

• Innovation and Design
• Indoor Environmental Quality
• Energy and Atmosphere

The problem is that LEED was created with no input from the integration community.

On the other hand, the landscaping lobby was obviously deeply involved. Thus, is it true that a single drought-resistant plant for a LEED home is worth 2 points and a whole-house lighting control system is worth 1, for example?

"It's true," admits Courtney Baker, manager of residential operations for USGBC. "No one was necessarily asleep at the wheel. It was just a mishap." He adds that appliances are currently the only electronic devices that can earn LEED points.

So how many LEED points can an integrator actually earn for a home? "It's hard to say," says Baker. "It gets murky. Certainly, there are areas where integrators can help, especially in the design process. For example, LEED requires that contractors meet as a team, including the integrator. That is a value that the integrator brings to the process, but it's not worth any direct points. Right now, none of the green building programs have specific technology points in place."

Baker says there is no formal relationship between the USGBC and either CEDIA or CEA's TechHome Division. "CEDIA and CEA are just now coming into the picture," he says. Meanwhile, CEDIA launched a Green Council in 2007 that is communicating with USGBC. The group, headed by Marilyn Sanford of La Scala in Vancouver, B.C., has "reverse-engineered" LEED-H to determine how integrators can get more points for LEED homes. "The LEED standard is coveted by builders, designers and architects. We hope we can influence LEED," says Sanford, who is looking for dealers to provide green home case studies to the council.

The immediate problem for getting alterations to LEED lies in the timing. Updates are done in two-year cycles, but the commercial version of LEED was just updated in 2009. Baker says USGBC wants to sync the updates of the LEED-H to correspond with the commercial version. That means 2011 or later.

Why do homeowners want LEED homes? "It's mostly pride right now," says Baker, but some states and cities are trying to incent homeowners and homebuilders. Baker says the state of New Mexico offers builders a $12,000 tax credit per home, while the city of Cleveland, Ohio, waives a portion of a LEED homeowner's property taxes over a 15-year period.


Smart Energy is one of 6 pillars of EHX Spring 2010, Orlando, Fla.