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Another popular program is the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) program. LEED is a self-assessing system designed for rating new and existing commercial, institutional, and high-rise residential buildings. It evaluates environmental performance from a "whole building" perspective over a building's life cycle, providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a green building.
Many ask whether or not a specific product is LEED "certified." The short answer is that white Stevens membranes meet the requirements of the USGBC LEED Program. That said however, it is important to understand that individual products are not certified for the LEED program.
The LEED program focuses exclusively on an individual building structure not a specific product. The purpose of the program is to evaluate the whole building from an environmental performance perspective over the building's life cycle to determine if the building is a "green" building.
Energy Efficient "Green" Roofing
Under the program a building is evaluated based on six primary categories including sustainable site, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality and innovation and design process. Points or credits are awarded for the various line items in each of the above categories, and buildings are deemed LEED buildings if they earn a certain number of points. The rating is as follows: a building is LEED Certified with 26-32 points; Silver with 33-38 points; Gold with 39-51 points and Platinum with 52-69 points.One of the credits available in the first category – sustainable sites – is "Landscape & Exterior Design to Reduce Heat Islands/Roof" (credit 7). The intent of this credit is to "reduce heat islands (thermal gradient differences between developed and undeveloped areas) to minimize impact on microclimate and human and wildlife habitat." As such, one point (of the 69 points available in the program) is available if the building uses a roof with both high reflectance and high emissivity.The requirement states: "Use Energy Star Roof-compliant, high-reflectance AND high emissivity roofing (initial reflectance of at least 0.65 and three year aged reflectance of at least 0.5 when tested in accordance with ASTM E903 and emissivity of at least 0.9 when tested in accordance with ASTM 408) for a minimum of 75% of the roof surface; OR, install a "green" (vegetated) roof for at least 50% of the roof area."
Keep in mind that not all Energy Star rated roofing products meet this criterion, because the Energy Star program does not include any emissivity measurement. Stevens Systems offers nine (9) products that meet the requirements for steep sloped roofs (ss credit 7.2). include our Stevens EP™ (TPO), Stevens EV® (Elvaloy), and Stevens Hypalon® (CSPE) in a variety of tasteful colors.
Click here to see how Stevens contributes to the LEED effort.
The new LEED-Existing Buildings rating system addresses building operations and maintenance as well as systems upgrades in existing buildings.
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