In architecture school in the 1970s we learned a fair amount about passive solar design. We learned about orienting a building to take advantage of solar angles, about trombe walls, overhangs and brise-soleils. Although, back then, a lot of passive solar designs tended to look alike, it certainly seemed to us that in the midst of an energy crisis, we'd be doing energy-efficient buildings in our careers. 

But when I got my first job working for an architect, he couldn't have been less interested in passive solar design, and dismissed solar hot water as "plumbing." A few years later I needed to use all that solar training to pass the licensing exam, but the reality was that owners and developers wanted their buildings oriented to the street, not the sun. Codes required that we put more insulation in buildings, but few clients, and none of mine, wanted to spend extra money on solar features. Part of that was because I came of age when a lot of buildings were built as depreciable tax write-offs, but even beyond that, high-style buildings were in the process of losing ground to advertising as the way a company or institution represented itself to the public. 

In Old Buildings Combine Sustainability, Preservation, Miller-McCune asserts both that reusing older buildings is "greener," and that old buildings were often better built to boot. Just as a used car can be the greenest vehicle available:

Much to the consternation of developers and redevelopment agencies intent on demolishing historic buildings and constructing new ones, these days, in the name of going green, preservationists are making the case that “the greenest building is the one already built.” ...Meanwhile, to the delight of preservationists, old buildings have been adjudged to be surprisingly energy efficient. U.S. Department of Energy research on the energy performance of existing buildings ascertained that commercial buildings constructed before 1920 use less energy per square foot than buildings from any other period of time except after 2000. Older buildings, it seems, were constructed with high thermal mass, passive heating and cooling. And, obviously, were built to last.

They were also often built with higher ceilings, natural ventilation and natural daylighting in almost every room. They didn't have much insulation, and the insulation may have been little more than vermiculite poured into cmu voids, but I've added insulation to, and replaced windows in, lots of sound buildings. 

How do old buildings compare to today's LEED buildings? In Is LEED the Gold Standard in Green?, Miller-McCune repeats some arguments and complaints I have heard about LEED. The first complaint I heard was that the rating system tends to be a laundry list of small fixes rather than a holistic approach to designing an efficient building. I'm not an AP, but I've been studying the US Green Building Council (USGBC) books, and worked with an AP on my recent library project.

It is possible to get LEED Silver with a building of fairly ordinary energy efficiency by earning a lot of credits in the other areas, such as Sustainable Sites, or Indoor Air Quality. It is also possible to do a comprehensive energy design, get "exemplary" credits and earn the LEED Platinum rating. But while government agencies, material manufacturers and many professionals have embraced LEED, there are detractors:

Henry Gifford has made his living designing mechanical systems for energy-efficient buildings in New York City. And he admits the program has popularized the idea of green building: “LEED has probably contributed more to the current popularity of green buildings in the public’s eye than anything else. It is such a valuable selling point that it is featured prominently in advertisements for buildings that achieve it. LEED-certified buildings make headlines, attract tenants and command higher prices.”

But for years, Gifford has been a tenacious and vocal opponent of LEED, claiming that the program’s “big return on investment” is more a matter of faith than fact, and that LEED simply “fills the need for a big lie to the public.” Last October, Gifford filed a class-action lawsuit for more than $100 million against the USGBC, accusing the nonprofit of making false claims about how much energy LEED-certified buildings actually save and using its claims to advance a monopoly in the market that robs legitimate experts — such as himself — of jobs....“The LEED system has changed the market for environmentally friendly buildings in the U.S.,” Gifford says. “But there is an enormous problem: The best data available show that on average, they use more energy than comparable buildings. What has been created is the image of energy-efficient buildings, but not actual energy efficiency.”

LEED is in an interesting position. We have some government clients that have to get a LEED rating, we have other clients that want us to follow LEED, but don't want to go through the expense and paperwork of the USGBC process. We explain that it is difficult to verify compliance without a certain amount of paperwork. (Our school for the deaf was more energy efficient by following school district requirements than the library was by following LEED.) Also, as the article mentions, code organizations are trying to work LEED-like requirements into green building codes - particularly the International Green Construction Code (IGCC) from the International Code Council (ICC). ICC is the 800 lb gorilla of building codes being sort of a merger of Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA), which I used to use a lot, International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO), which I used a bit, and Southern Building Code Congress International (SBCCI). 

It's simpler for design professionals to learn a predominant code rather than having localities picking and choosing between the many codes out there, and it would certainly be simpler for us to follow IGCC on every project rather than LEED on some of them.

Even if it isn't perfect, the USGBC took the initiative in developing green standards that people would follow. If LEED gets clients to want truly efficient buildings, I may actually get to do a passive solar building someday.