USGBC Adopts Core Performance Guide for LEED Energy Points

In July 2007, the New Buildings Institute (NBI) released its Advanced Buildings

Core Performance Guide, which outlines cost-effective ways to achieve 20%–30% energy savings in new buildings (see

EBN

Vol. 16, No. 8).

Core Performance replaced the Advanced Buildings

Benchmark, which was cited in LEED for New Construction as a way to achieve an energy optimization point without energy modeling. Around the same time, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced that all new buildings would be required to earn two energy optimization points in LEED, making the

Benchmark obsolete. Now USGBC has announced that

Core Performance may be used as an alternate path to five energy optimization points, two points more than NBI had predicted. More information is available at www.advancedbuildings.net.