Dive Brief:
- Major players in the setting of what green means for building construction have decided to work together toward a multi-purpose standard that will advance all of their interests and reduce headaches for anyone trying to navigate through the forest of LEED, IgCC, ASHRAE 189.1.
- A number of organizations will develop an updated 189.1 that will lay out baseline metrics and other standards that match up with LEED and the International Green Building Code, and the IgCC will become a form of 189.1 that governments can adopt as regulation, rather than being a separate entity.
- Finally, the standards laid out in the new IgCC will be acceptable as prerequisites for the LEED process if owners want to pursue it, and some LEED requirements will make their way into future versions of 189.1.
Dive Insight:
Competing standards were hardly going to encourage as much green buioding as they could by making the process less onerous. ASHRAE President Tom Phoenix said someone probably was going to lose out if the multiple systems kept up. Now the problem is just getting the same of the revised 189.1 out in one breath: "ANSI/ASHRAE/IES/USGBC Standard 189.1, Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings."
