LEED-CI v4 Projects in Terms of Life Cycle Assessment in Manhattan, New York City: A Case Study

Svetlana Pushkar ()
Additional contact information
Svetlana Pushkar: Department of Civil Engineering, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Over the last decade, it has been clearly shown that the same achievements in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects can lead to different life cycle assessments (LCAs). However, the problem of contradictory achievements in LEED and LCA has not yet been resolved. This study aimed to identify and evaluate different strategies for LEED projects using LCAs. Thirty-nine LEED projects with the same characteristics—location and transportation, rating system, rating version, certification level, and space type—were collected and sorted by their energy and atmosphere (EA) category, “optimize energy performance” credit (EAc6) achievement into three equal groups (EA Low , EA Medium , and EA High , where each group includes 13 LEED projects) to minimize the influence of uncontrolled factors on the LEED project strategy. The author focused on two extreme groups with very different EAc6 credit scores: EA Low (13 projects) and EA High (13 projects). The groups were compared across LEED categories and credits. Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney and Cliff’s δ test results showed that the EA Low and EA High groups are associated with high/low achievements in materials-related credits such as “interiors life cycle impact reduction”, “building product disclosure and optimization—material ingredients”, and “low-emitting materials”. As a result, the EA Low and EA High groups were reclassified into Energy Low –Materials High and Energy high –Materials Low certification strategy groups. In this context, LCAs were used to assess the differences between the two strategies. The results showed that if natural gas was used for operational energy (OE), the Energy High –Materials Low strategy showed lower environmental damage compared to the Energy Low –Materials High strategy ( p = 0.0635); meanwhile, if photovoltaic energy was used for OE, the Energy Low –Materials High strategy showed lower environmental damage compared to the Energy High –Materials Low strategy ( p = 0.0036). The author recommends using the LEED protocol and the LCA method in parallel to better reflect the environmental impact of different certification strategies.

Keywords: LEED-CI v4 gold-certified projects; energy credits; material credits; LCAs; ReCiPe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2360/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2360/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2360-:d:1048917

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().