Yesterday, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced a new milestone for LEED: that we’ve surpassed more than one billion square feet of commercial green building space recertifying under LEED. Recertification is available for all occupied and in-use projects that have previously achieved LEED certification, and is helping project teams ensure the strategies they implemented during their design, construction and operations are driving expected performance outcomes for their projects. Recertification verifies LEED projects continue to maintain high levels of sustainability performance long after they constructed and occupied.
The Arc performance platform has been a vital resource for projects pursuing recertification and continuous performance improvement. By measuring their energy, water, waste, transportation and human experience data through Arc, buildings can achieve recertification and quantify their investments in making this planet a better place.
More than 21,000 projects in 135 countries are using Arc to track their data, covering 5.54 billion square feet of space and impacting 10.4 million occupants. And while achieving LEED recertification is often the goal for projects utilizing the platform, buildings and portfolios do not need to pursue LEED to obtain the benefits of tracking and improving their impact on the planet and their occupants.
As USGBC mentions, recertification enables owners to protect their sustainability investments over time by ensuring that their initial certification is just the starting point for ongoing environmental mitigation. With ever-increasing organizational commitments to ESG and sustainability goals, improving building performance is one of the most powerful ways companies can improve their footprint and work toward net zero.
Learn More About the Recertification Guidelines for LEED Buildings