Green Globes Costs Less Than LEED, Study Says

PHILADELPHIA — A new study from Drexel University has found that the Green Globes green building certification is more cost efficient and more quickly completed than LEED certification.

Entitled “A Study of Comparative Sustainability Costs/Green Rating Systems Cost Comparison Study: LEED and Green Globes”, the study was headed by Jeffrey Beard, an associate professor of construction management at Drexel’s College of Engineering.

“Green Globe certification currently gives the market a choice among certification systems and provides competition that helps improve results for users, resulting in more innovation and lower costs over time,” said Jerry Yudelson, president of the Green Building Initiative, in a statement. "In this particular project, the cost savings to the university were on the order of $1 per square foot, a significant number for a large building."

1. Intrinsic hard costs — allocable on a line-by-line basis — for meeting criteria in each of the rating systems.
2. Soft costs, whether accounted for as part of the indirect project costs or secondary soft costs that arose as a result of the project, but were otherwise allocated or absorbed.
3. Optional costs arising from implementation of the two green building rating systems.

The study concentrated on the certification of the five-story, 130,000-square-foot Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building, which opened in 2011 and has received three Green Globes as well as LEED Gold certification. The university’s records indicate internal costs at Drexel for administering both systems were more than $125,000 for LEED versus $9,000 for Green Globes. The report’s summary shows aggregate green building costs nearly 15 percent higher for LEED than for Green Globes.

While the study was funded by GBI, Beard conducted the research without any oversight from GBI, according to the organization. Beard used timesheets and other records of administrative costs maintained by the project team and Drexel University.