USA Today and Green Building Council Debate LEED Program

MCLEAN, Va. — A recent article in USA Today has reenergized the debate on green building. The report, titled “Green schools: Long on promise, short on delivery,” lambasted the U.S. Green Building Council and its LEED certification program, which led to a reply from the non-profit organization, titled “Response to 4th USA Today Article Attacking Green Buildings.” Needless to say, the very public sparring match has made some headlines across the nation and stirred up the discussion about green schools.

The USA Today article began by listing the rankings of three LEED-certified Houston schools in a study conducted by a local utility to determine how much various schools spent on energy.

The nationally distributed newspaper indicated that the three LEED-certified schools ranked 205th, 155th and 46th out of 239 schools in the area in terms of energy cost per student. The study did not compare the services provided at the schools or the relative size of the school’s facilities, or name the utility in question. The article did point out that the schools mentioned were plagued by poor equipment maintenance.

USA Today argues that the Green Building Council relies on projections for energy use for 30 certified schools, rather than actual energy use after construction, to make its argument that LEED certified schools use about a third less energy than standard schools. The article contends that one of those schools, Washington Middle School in Olympia, Wash., used 65 percent more energy than projected in its first two years of operation, which caused it to use 19 percent more energy than a conventional school over that period.

Next, the article contends that a report about energy use by schools in Washington state found that only 65 percent of a dozen green schools were more energy efficient than conventional schools, but it doesn’t list the name of the report or who wrote it.

Later in the article, the authors explain they reviewed school test records and found “little correlation” between green schools and student performance on test scores. This runs counter to findings by McGraw-Hill Construction, an industry research and news company. The organization announced at the annual Greenbuild expo, held in San Francisco this November, that it would release a report in early 2013, detailing the positive impacts of green building practices on educational outcomes.

In the preview presentation, Harvey Bernstein, vice president of industry insights and alliances for McGraw-Hill, explained that his company’s research indicated schools that added green features saw a 32-percent reduction in absenteeism and a 68-percent increase in the quality of test scores. The VP explained the data for these studies only went back to 2007 because of a lack of data before that time. The USA Today report looked at 65 LEED schools that have been opened for at least two years, finding that 42 of the schools saw scores improve while 23 saw them decline. The article argues that “many of the changes were small and moved in the same direction as the school district.”

The newspaper also pointed out that 14 states currently require LEED certification, while two states don’t require it but do give extra funding to schools that choose to pursue certification. It says that over 200 federal agencies and municipalities require some level of LEED certification for public buildings, while 85 cities require the standard for some private buildings.

In its response, the U.S. Green Building Council argued that the USA Today article is “deliberately ignoring information we provided and cherry picking data that misleads readers.”

The reply added that, “On average, green schools use 33 percent less energy and 32 percent less water than conventionally constructed schools, significantly reducing utility costs. These are facts.”