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You seem to be operating old information and/or bad assumptions about the typical standard (LEED). It very much covers the criticisms you claim it does not incl

You seem to be operating old information and/or bad assumptions about the typical standard (LEED). It very much covers the criticisms you claim it does not include. It isn't simply a bunch of check boxes for no reason. https://www.usgbc.org/leed/v4 https://www.usgbc.org/leed/v4

etempleton 5y ago
Interesting! Yes, I am not familiar with LEED v4, but am reading through it now. My experience is based on older models of LEED. V4 does appear to address some of my criticisms or at least move in the right direction. And to clarify, I don’t believe the “check boxes” are completely meaningless, rather the issue is that it provides room for gaming of the system to achieve a rating. This of course will probably always occur to some extent. Thank you for edifying me.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  I think you still have a point however. What is objectively true vs. what is subjectively understood and expected from "Green" as an ideology, are generation two completely different things. Expectations are unreasonable in the latter. So that causes the judgement of "success" to be unreasonable. Most people do not have an objective understand or perspective of what being Green under LEED would mean. Most people think and act as though you can throw up a few solar panels and then run an iron blast furnace with the Green energy. The numbers simply don't work. Most people do not understand how much energy is required to provide their current lifestyle! The level innumeracy and its universality of that innumeracy is that Epic Fail. It's the worst in places that are the most religiously strident places like California. In general, you'd need land for solar panels equivalent to your entire neighborhood to merely duplicate and provide your current energy use just from your own home. And that doesn't even cover EVs being charged! So how much did that house cost you? And now you need 10x that much land just to be Green? And what about the energy inputs to build and keep the Grid going so you can use cheap land for that? It's a lot more than anyone typically is aware of! Try 20x-500x depending on specifics of things like thermodynamic efficiency and resulting impact on supply chains! And a 10x-20x puts you into fossil fuel, nuclear power territory being optimal.
  - danans 5y ago
    > In general, you'd need land for solar panels equivalent to your entire neighborhood to merely duplicate and provide your current energy use just from your own home. That's false because it is based on the assumption that you should convert the input BTUs of your natural gas heater directly to hypothetical kWH consumed if substituted with electricity, which is silly because if you are trying to generate 100% of your energy consumption locally (a goal of questionable value itself), you would change your mechanical systems to electrical ones that are 3-5x more efficient at delivering space heating than natural gas furnaces. The most efficient nat gas furnaces are 96% efficient, but heat pumps routinely achieve 300-400% efficiency. That works out to far lower energy input for space heating. A far more sensible approach to local electricity generation is to move to more efficient building and mechanical systems and only generate enough electricity via solar+storage to power critical loads during a grid outage. > And that doesn't even cover EVs being charged! Given, the average American commute distance, EVs will always be a grid coupled technology due to their huge energy requirements. This is a good thing because they will needed to provide buffers for grid and home resiliency to less predictable power supply and demand patterns.
  - marcinzm 5y ago
    >It's the worst in places that are the most religiously strident places like California. In general, you'd need land for solar panels equivalent to your entire neighborhood to merely duplicate and provide your current energy use just from your own home. And that doesn't even cover EVs being charged! Math please. A 100 square foot solar panel would generate around 150 kWh per month given around 5 hours of sunlight a day. The average household uses under 1000 kWh per month. So you'd need around 700 sqft of solar panels to cover that which fits on the roof of a single story house easily. edit: And plenty of people sell electricity back to the grid on average while having rooftop solar panels.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > Most people think and act as though you can throw up a few solar panels and then run an iron blast furnace with the Green energy. Which people? > It's the worst in places that are the most religiously strident places like California. Like the prior quote, this characterizes and denigrates a different set of people. It tells us nothing but your willingness to insult and ignore them. Let's stop dismissing people (probably not coincidentally, a certain political grouping being dismissed using the language common to another political grouping) and use genuine curiosity about the world - and other people - to further our knowledge. Maybe some people in CA know something important; maybe they should be treated with respect and listened to, being other genuine people.
- freshpots 5y ago
  YW, older LEED standards have really left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths so to speak. We have a building at work that is LEED and it has some issues so it is LEED's fault. That kind of thing spreads and then those average people start to believe 'eco-friendly' buildings are useless and don't help the environment. I hope LEED developers focus more on the human aspect and the implications of biases when 'checking boxes'.
lukeschlather 5y ago
I went to a talk that specifically said LEED is a terrible standard and contrasted it with other standards that actually work. The LEEDv4 marketing materials don't have the tone I would expect if LEED has actually evolved into something more useful than a greenwashing marketing program. Maybe they've improved it but I would need to have some third party say "earlier versions of LEED didn't actually mean any of the things you would expect, and LEEDv4 has corrected that in a meaningful way."

etempleton 5y ago

Interesting! Yes, I am not familiar with LEED v4, but am reading through it now. My experience is based on older models of LEED. V4 does appear to address some of my criticisms or at least move in the right direction. And to clarify, I don’t believe the “check boxes” are completely meaningless, rather the issue is that it provides room for gaming of the system to achieve a rating. This of course will probably always occur to some extent. Thank you for edifying me.

xyzzy21 5y ago
I think you still have a point however. What is objectively true vs. what is subjectively understood and expected from "Green" as an ideology, are generation two completely different things. Expectations are unreasonable in the latter. So that causes the judgement of "success" to be unreasonable. Most people do not have an objective understand or perspective of what being Green under LEED would mean. Most people think and act as though you can throw up a few solar panels and then run an iron blast furnace with the Green energy. The numbers simply don't work. Most people do not understand how much energy is required to provide their current lifestyle! The level innumeracy and its universality of that innumeracy is that Epic Fail. It's the worst in places that are the most religiously strident places like California. In general, you'd need land for solar panels equivalent to your entire neighborhood to merely duplicate and provide your current energy use just from your own home. And that doesn't even cover EVs being charged! So how much did that house cost you? And now you need 10x that much land just to be Green? And what about the energy inputs to build and keep the Grid going so you can use cheap land for that? It's a lot more than anyone typically is aware of! Try 20x-500x depending on specifics of things like thermodynamic efficiency and resulting impact on supply chains! And a 10x-20x puts you into fossil fuel, nuclear power territory being optimal.
- danans 5y ago
  > In general, you'd need land for solar panels equivalent to your entire neighborhood to merely duplicate and provide your current energy use just from your own home. That's false because it is based on the assumption that you should convert the input BTUs of your natural gas heater directly to hypothetical kWH consumed if substituted with electricity, which is silly because if you are trying to generate 100% of your energy consumption locally (a goal of questionable value itself), you would change your mechanical systems to electrical ones that are 3-5x more efficient at delivering space heating than natural gas furnaces. The most efficient nat gas furnaces are 96% efficient, but heat pumps routinely achieve 300-400% efficiency. That works out to far lower energy input for space heating. A far more sensible approach to local electricity generation is to move to more efficient building and mechanical systems and only generate enough electricity via solar+storage to power critical loads during a grid outage. > And that doesn't even cover EVs being charged! Given, the average American commute distance, EVs will always be a grid coupled technology due to their huge energy requirements. This is a good thing because they will needed to provide buffers for grid and home resiliency to less predictable power supply and demand patterns.
- marcinzm 5y ago
  >It's the worst in places that are the most religiously strident places like California. In general, you'd need land for solar panels equivalent to your entire neighborhood to merely duplicate and provide your current energy use just from your own home. And that doesn't even cover EVs being charged! Math please. A 100 square foot solar panel would generate around 150 kWh per month given around 5 hours of sunlight a day. The average household uses under 1000 kWh per month. So you'd need around 700 sqft of solar panels to cover that which fits on the roof of a single story house easily. edit: And plenty of people sell electricity back to the grid on average while having rooftop solar panels.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Most people think and act as though you can throw up a few solar panels and then run an iron blast furnace with the Green energy. Which people? > It's the worst in places that are the most religiously strident places like California. Like the prior quote, this characterizes and denigrates a different set of people. It tells us nothing but your willingness to insult and ignore them. Let's stop dismissing people (probably not coincidentally, a certain political grouping being dismissed using the language common to another political grouping) and use genuine curiosity about the world - and other people - to further our knowledge. Maybe some people in CA know something important; maybe they should be treated with respect and listened to, being other genuine people.
freshpots 5y ago
YW, older LEED standards have really left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths so to speak. We have a building at work that is LEED and it has some issues so it is LEED's fault. That kind of thing spreads and then those average people start to believe 'eco-friendly' buildings are useless and don't help the environment. I hope LEED developers focus more on the human aspect and the implications of biases when 'checking boxes'.

lukeschlather 5y ago

I went to a talk that specifically said LEED is a terrible standard and contrasted it with other standards that actually work. The LEEDv4 marketing materials don't have the tone I would expect if LEED has actually evolved into something more useful than a greenwashing marketing program. Maybe they've improved it but I would need to have some third party say "earlier versions of LEED didn't actually mean any of the things you would expect, and LEEDv4 has corrected that in a meaningful way."