Is LEED important for all business sectors?

[lockmat]

I found an article by Kirskey about how they are "greening the energy corridor" and included was a quote by Shell manager of corporate real estate saying, "In the future, you will not find Shell in a non-green building." Whether he necessarily means LEED as well I guess is a question that would need to be asked to him.

Also consider this quote:

"Ms. Ballard also offered some very interesting information coming from their human resources department. Potential new-hires, mostly recent college graduates, were asking if they were going to be working in a LEED® certified building. Their HR Department was not familiar with green buildings, much less the LEED certification program. After all, what would green building have to do with human resources?"

I work in a oil/gas services company, different from the likes of Shell, Exxon etc. We are building new buildings and to my knowledge they are not LEED certified, neither do I know if they are even interested in building a "green" building; one that is efficient and will save money, yes...but "green" or LEED? I'm not sure. This may be out of complete ignorance of the LEED wave or I'm just wondering if energy companies like Shell and Exxon are doing it simply because they are more in the public eye than services companies and are doing it mostly for marketing reasons? LEED is mostly about marketing anyway, do y'all think it's important for companies not so much in the public eye to be in LEED buildings?

http://www.kirksey.com/files/articles/pdf/GreeningHoustonsEnergyCorridor_0.pdf

[TheNiche]

I found an article by Kirskey about how they are "greening the energy corridor" and included was a quote by Shell manager of corporate real estate saying, "In the future, you will not find Shell in a non-green building." Whether he necessarily means LEED as well I guess is a question that would need to be asked to him.

Also consider this quote:

"Ms. Ballard also offered some very interesting information coming from their human resources department. Potential new-hires, mostly recent college graduates, were asking if they were going to be working in a LEED® certified building. Their HR Department was not familiar with green buildings, much less the LEED certification program. After all, what would green building have to do with human resources?"

I work in a oil/gas services company, different from the likes of Shell, Exxon etc. We are building new buildings and to my knowledge they are not LEED certified, neither do I know if they are even interested in building a "green" building; one that is efficient and will save money, yes...but "green" or LEED? I'm not sure. This may be out of complete ignorance of the LEED wave or I'm just wondering if energy companies like Shell and Exxon are doing it simply because they are more in the public eye than services companies and are doing it mostly for marketing reasons? LEED is mostly about marketing anyway, do y'all think it's important for companies not so much in the public eye to be in LEED buildings?

http://www.kirksey.com/files/articles/pdf/GreeningHoustonsEnergyCorridor_0.pdf

The first thing you have to realize about LEED is that to an architecture firm, "green" is synonymous with LEED certification. That is because LEED requires a lengthy testing and verification process that adds up to 50% to the cost of making a building "green". The architecture firm captures most of it; and this is by design. It can be a huge source of revenue for them, and so all these different architecture firms are willing to expend tremendous effort to advertise their services and the benefits of LEED certification. By comparison, the US Green Building Council, the organization behind LEED, doesn't have to do very much of anything at all to promote its services. It just rakes in the income from certification fees and by selling LEED AP designations.

There are other ways to designate a building as "green", but you've never heard of them. They aren't as costly, so there's not much money in it for the architect. And so the architect doesn't promote that certification, you never hear about it, and nobody values it. At the end of the day, it's about image and branding. It is an expensive symbol for the symbol-minded.

Firms that are genuinely interested in efficiency can accomplish that goal at a much lower cost. Likewise, those that want to promote renewable energy resources know that they can get much better bang for the buck by investing in large-scale off-site wind farms and solar facilities; the only problem with this is that nobody is aware of how awesome such persons are. But...genuine concern is not sexy. There's not much money in it.