At the recent Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Atlanta, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) unveiled its vision for the new LEED Positive initiative, a vision that embraces a series of subtle changes to the group's approach to building certification standards. 

Mahesh Ramanujam, president and CEO of USGBC, writes in a press release, "LEED must evolve qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitatively, it must transition from strategies that reduce the harm done by buildings to strategies that cause no harm and are regenerative by design, ensuring our buildings are actually giving back more than they take. And quantitatively it will need to accelerate and increase its impact ten to a hundred-fold."

The refined perspective means that LEED will now place an added focus on requiring "new construction to go further" as an industry-wide effort to decarbonize the building sector gets off the ground. The program will also "push existing buildings with high energy usage to substantially increase their efficiency efforts," according to Ramanujam. 

To that end, USGBC is also moving to do more to "provide existing buildings with a pathway to LEED certification" by allowing building owners and operators to submit performance data collected from existing structures for evaluation, a process that can lead to LEED certification once the group's rubrics —energy, water, waste, transportation and human experience are being measured—are met. 

Melissa Baker, senior vice president of LEED Technical Core at USGBC, said via press release, “Thanks to LEED v4.1, we are seeing increased interest from existing buildings in LEED certification. This is crucial because existing buildings represent our largest market segment, providing category level performance certificates is an important catalyst in further accelerating the transformation of our existing buildings."