D.C. Hits LEED Milestone

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia has surpassed 100 million square feet of space certified as meeting LEED standards, Mayor Vincent Gray announced on Sept. 11.

Only three other cities in the country — Chicago, New York and Houston — have passed that threshold, but the District leads all U.S. cities in the total number of LEED projects. Per capita, the District has led all states and major cities in LEED-certified projects and square footage for several years, according to a statement.

“While we may not be one of the largest cities in the nation, we match and surpass the nation’s biggest metropolises in our commitment to green building,” said Mayor Gray in the statement. “The collaborative leadership on sustainable building across the District’s private sector, District agencies and federal partners is truly outstanding.”

Green building is crucial to the implementation of the mayor’s Sustainable DC Plan, which aims to make the District the “healthiest, greenest, most livable city in the nation over the next 20 years.”

Several District agencies have committed significant resources to design and construct LEED-certified buildings across the city following passage of the Green Building Act of 2006. Together with the District’s building industry and federal partners such as the General Services Administration, building owners and managers have achieved LEED certification for more than 500 projects across all building types.

“Mayor Gray and our forward-looking public- and private-sector partners share a common vision of the District as a national and world leader in green building,” said Keith Anderson, director of the District Department of the Environment (DDOE), in a statement. “Crossing the 100 million-square-foot threshold is proof that the District is growing a robust green marketplace where owners, developers, designers, tenants and our city as a whole all share the benefits of healthier, more efficient buildings.”

The milestone for green accomplishments in the District follows a controversial analysis from the Environmental Policy Alliance, which revealed in February that large privately owned buildings in Washington, D.C., certified under LEED standards, actually use more energy than uncertified buildings. These findings are significant, the organization argued, as the city is one of several major localities to mandate the use of LEED in construction of public buildings and was the first city to require all buildings, public and private, to disclose energy usage.

“This latest data release only confirms what we already knew: LEED certification is little more than a fancy plaque displayed by these ‘green’ buildings,” said Anastasia Swearingen, research analyst for the Environmental Policy Alliance, in a statement. “Previous analyses of energy use by LEED-certified buildings have consistently shown that LEED ratings have no bearing on actual energy efficiency.”