Responding to thousands of comments on the first draft, USGBC made major changes to LEED 2012, especially in materials. A second draft of LEED 2012 is out, and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is accepting public comments from August 1 to September 14. The new draft and its revisions reflect hundreds of hours of USGBC staff and volunteer time. If a final version of LEED 2012 is approved by USGBC members next year, it will be released around November 2012. Among the changes to this draft is the name. In its first draft of the new suite of LEED

A federal lawsuit filed in October 2010 against the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and other defendants, focusing on allegedly fraudulent claims of the LEED rating system, has been amended. Filed February 7th, 2011, the amended complaint has been boiled down to a claim of false advertising, and is no longer a class-action suit. As with the original lawsuit (see USGBC, LEED Targeted by Class-Action Suit), the amended version focuses on a critique by Henry Gifford, a mechanical systems consultant, that USGBC falsely claims that LEED guarantees energy savings in LEED-certified buildings. Click to enlarge + This graph from the

A proposed rewrite of the certified wood policy in the LEED rating systems failed to get enough votes from U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) members to become policy. USGBC announced that of the 965 people who had opted in to a voting body, 54 percent voted, with 55 percent of those voting “Yes,” and 42 percent voting “No.” Three percent abstained. Without a two-thirds majority, the policy failed to pass under LEED rules, and the certified wood credits will remain unchanged. Only certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is recognized under credits in the various LEED rating systems awarding