LEED v5 Carbon Requirements: A California Case Study
GreenCE’s mission is to support the necessary transition to a sustainable built environment by empowering design professionals to address the environmental, economic, and social impacts of buildings. GreenCE’s course catalog includes LEED exam preparation, continuing education to maintain your AIA or LEED credential, as well as specialty education focused on topics such as ADA/Barrier-Free requirements. We are committed to designing the highest quality continuing education programs in the construction industry.
California is the fourth-largest economy in the world and is experiencing many of the impacts of climate change at the same time. Extreme heat events are occurring earlier in the year and lasting longer. Snowpack is declining, wildfire risk is increasing, and several of the nation’s most polluted metropolitan areas are here.
At the same time, many Californians face rising housing and energy costs, with electricity prices among the highest in the nation.
These pressures are connected to greenhouse gas emissions in two directions. Accumulated emissions contribute to the warming behind them. In turn, the pressures can increase building energy use — more air conditioning, more energy to pump and treat water, more indoor air filtration, and more reconstruction after wildfire — which adds further emissions.
Buildings are involved in both directions. This course uses California as a case study, then turns to LEED v5 BD+C design strategies for thermal resilience, indoor air quality, water demand, and occupant affordability, identifying the greenhouse gas emissions associated with each.
- Identify LEED v5 BD+C design strategies that reduce heat exposure and extend habitability during extreme heat and power loss and explain why reducing electricity demand during high-demand hours typically avoids more emissions per kilowatt-hour than the same reduction during lower-demand hours.
- Describe LEED v5 BD+C design strategies that protect indoor air quality and reduce potable water demand and identify the greenhouse gas emissions associated with fan energy and with water conveyance, treatment, and heating.
- Apply LEED v5 BD+C design strategies that lower operating cost and energy burden for occupants while reducing operational emissions and embodied carbon through the same decisions.
- Explain how California’s heat, water, air, wildfire, and cost pressures create design constraints that affect building energy use, and trace how each pressure connects to building-related greenhouse gas emissions.
