The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has launched the Newest Version of LEED Green Building Program, LEED v4, at the annual Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Philadelphia.
LEED has revolutionized the marketplace since 1998 as the world's premier benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. LEED v4 builds on the fundamentals of previous versions while offering a new system that prepares all LEED projects in a portfolio to perform at a higher level.
"LEED v4 is a quantum leap for LEED," commented Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chair, USGBC. "Over the past 15 years, LEED has fundamentally revolutionized how we design, construct, operate and maintain our buildings and communities. LEED has created a completely new industry of business enterprise committed to energy savings and efficiency. LEED v4 is as much a testament to the achievements of LEED project teams around the world as it is to the green building community's ambition to create significant global and local change through resource-efficient, cost-effective green buildings."
LEED v4 encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria. Already, 122 beta projects from around the world are using LEED v4.