LEED certifying buildings and cities, and why it matters

The built environment represents one of society’s largest environmental impacts – contributing nearly one fifth of global GHG emissions, not to mention impacts on natural resources like air and water quality, local ecosystems, and quality of life for residents. Increasingly, policies and public opinion are concentrating on reducing those impacts – creating incentives for new construction and urban development to become more sustainable – to become more “green.”

But how do you define whether a building (or a city) is green? Tommy Linstroth is the founder and CEO of Green Badger, a company that provides sustainability accounting services for new construction projects, and Hilari Varnadore is the Vice President for Cities at the U.S. Green Building Council. The two joined Climate Now to explain the globally leading metric for quantifying sustainability of the built environment:  Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. Tune in to hear how buildings, stadiums and cities can become LEED certified – what the process entails, what the criteria are, and why every new construction project and city planner should want to be certified as “green” through a process like LEED.