Latest version of LEED to focus on embodied carbon

Version 5 of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification is set to focus heavily on embodied carbon for products including luminaires.

The move by LEED, the most popular environmental metric for buildings in the world, will increase the pressure on manufacturers to supply data for their products.

Insiders say that LEED version 5 will put the emphasis on quality of life and ecological conservation through its three central pillars of operational and embodied carbon reduction, enhanced occupant health and equity and the restoration of ecosystems.

Version 5 is set to takes a more comprehensive approach to carbon reduction by addressing both operational and embodied carbon). For the first time, version 5 includes credits specifically aimed at minimising the embodied carbon footprint. It will reward designers who specify materials with lower embodied carbon.

One of the major goals of LEED v5 is to streamline performance indicators across the building’s life-cycle. In Operations and Maintenance, the number of individual strategies has been reduced from over 65 to 24, with the focus shifted to performance-based outcomes.
Approximately 80 per cent of the points in LEED v5 are now connected to performance, with 20 cent related to strategies. This reflects feedback from users of version 4.

The prominence of embodied carbon in LEED will add to the pressure on manufacturers of lighting and other construction equipment to be able to produce credible data for their products. However, manufacturers representative bodies have raised concerns about the costs associated with the compilation of such data, usually in the form of Environmental Product Declarations, or EPDs. Lighting brands tend to have large families of products, numbering into the thousands.

Recently, in what’s believed to be the biggest release of luminaire sustainability information in the lighting industry, Signify published 2,000 EPD for some 70,000 product variations.

• Diary date: Circular Lighting Live 2025, Recolight’s flagship conference and exhibition, takes place on Thursday 25 September 2025 at the Minster Building in the City of London. Free to specifiers, Circular Lighting Live 2025 will feature leading experts, specifiers and policy makers who will share their insights into forthcoming standards and legislation, emerging technologies and new business models. More info: www.circularlighting.live

Pic: The Fulton Center in New York was as the first subway to receive a LEED rating for sustainability and design. Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority/Patrick Cashin