LEED Heads to China

Both of the Asian nations have seen tremendous industrialization in recent years, leading to vast swathes of new development. Unfortunately, the environment has largely been ignored on the two nations' quests for higher profits. Both nations are producing increasingly high number of pollutants and using energy relatively inefficiently, with some sources even listing China as being the most polluting nation in the world. Both nations also tend to use non-renewable sources of energy for power generation such as coal which adds to the pollution and strain on resources that is projected to continue as both countries’ economies continue to boom. It may finally be time for both nations to start implanting modern environmental standards to help clean up their air, our earth, and help curb the unsustainable consumption of natural resources.

Robert Watson, a founding member of the US Green Building Council and developer of the LEED certification, has made it his mission to help expand LEED to other nations and promote the idea of building green. His recently founded consultancy, EcoTech International , aims to do just this.

One of the barriers that have prevented LEED from taking off in other nations is language and localization problems. Watson has started working with the Chinese Ministry of Construction to help localize LEED standards to China. Both the Chinese LEED and American LEED standards must meet the same performance standards, but must be based on different technical standards which are most appropriate to their respective nations. The process will also use native Chinese languages throughout the application process, making it easier to file a certification than it might be using English as the main language.

Watson also faces many barriers, some of which have previously been seen in the United States. For one, LEED’s prevalent stereotype brands it as an expensive certification, when in reality it does not have to be. The cost of developing a building to LEED standards usually only adds on about 1% to construction costs and in some cases can even lower it.

Other issues facing the growth of LEED in developing nations is the attitude of sticking to older methods of building and ignoring or avoiding newer ones. Many individuals are still largely ignorant about global warming, climate change and environmental issues facing our world today. Much of this blame can be laid on the governments of certain nations such as China who wish to avoid talk of such issues and instead focus solely on potentially unsustainable economic growth.

It is up to nations such as China to educate more people about green building and development practices if they hope to keep not only their economy stable, but the world as well.

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