Automatic LEED Points for CALGreen Code Compliance

A lot of cumbersome LEED documentation can now be bypassed for projects in California, according to new rules from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Designed to lure more projects into LEED certification and to recognize the high benchmark set by California codes, the ruling says three prerequisites and three credits will now be earned by virtue of meeting that state’s building code.

Setting up a “receiving line”

The California Green Building Standards Code (known as CALGreen) is the country’s only statewide code to make green building requirements mandatory. Since these buildings are already required to implement a few basic sustainability strategies, in theory it should be a small jump to pursue voluntary green ratings like LEED. But in the past, CALGreen and LEED have sometimes been competing for the same turf, and California hasn’t become the obvious market for LEED that it might have been.