U.S. Green Building Council offers real-time data

Pennsylvania has enough square feet of LEED-certified properties to fill 78 Empire State buildings.

That's according to a new real-time data website created by the U.S. Green Building Council, the third-party organization responsible for registering and certifying LEED projects. The state market briefs — highlighting LEED projects, LEED-credentialed professionals and USGBC membership in each state — give green-building advocates and the public a look into LEED's impact within any U.S. state.

"Our state-level market briefs demonstrate USGBC's commitment to data and information transparency at an important level of granularity. You can't find this data anywhere else in the market," Mahesh Ramanujam, chief operating officer for USGBC, said in a news release. "The choice to build green buildings is simple. These state-level data visualizations make it even simpler."

Each brief acts as a state-level barometer of economic activity taking place in an industry that McGraw-Hill projects could be worth up to $248 billion and will represent more than half of all commercial and institutional construction in the U.S. by 2016, according to the release.

The details on Pennsylvania show how green-building construction has ramped up over the past 10 years.

For example, nine projects were LEED certified in the state in 2004, taking the total number in the state since the program started in 1994 to 14. So far this year, 29 projects have been certified, bringing the total to 747.

Those are just the projects that have made it through the certification process as of April 21, when the site last updated. The total number of registered projects in the state since LEED started is 2,006. The registered projects do not include neighborhood development or home projects, said Cecilia Shutters, USGBC communications associate.

Most projects in the state — 284 — are Silver certified, which is the third-highest rank, before Gold and Platinum, but above projects that are simply certified. To get a higher certification such as Silver, the green features included in a project are given numerical ranks. Adding up all of the numbers determines the level of certification.

Most of the registered projects — 600 — are offices or mixed-use offices. There are 460 used for retail, 377 used for education, and 93 for public assembly and religious worship.

Market briefs for other countries are available upon request, and home and neighborhood development data and projects will be added later this year, according to the release.

Source: Central Penn Business Journal

U.S. Green Building Council State Market Brief