Scot Horst, his wife Char, and their two children are residents of Kutztown, PA. Scot is the Senior Vice President for LEED at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). He is widely recognized as one of the key leaders of the sustainable design movement. USGBC’s Mission: To transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy, and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life.

Scot Horst on LEED Certification

Chuck: Scot, thank you for giving me this time. I appreciate it.

Scot: You’re welcome.

Chuck: In going over some of the things I saw on the internet about LEED, and you are the President of it, right?…

Scot: Yes, I’m Senior Vice President at U.S. Green Building Council for LEED so I run the program.

Chuck: Okay. It says on one of the sites I was looking at that in the United States and a number of other countries around the world, LEED Certification is the recognized standard for measuring building sustainability. Is that correct?

Scot: Yes. I think it is actually. I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking with some of the people who run other, similar programs, over there. These people were from the UK, France and Germany. One said: “Look we all recognize LEED as the global brand.” People are seeing and using LEED in the world in a way that they aren’t seeing and using some of these other systems. So, I think that is fair to say.

Chuck: Okay. My first question, before we get into what LEED is and actually what LEED Certification is, is this: I’ve known you for a number of years and you were a guy that had a furniture store of some type on Main Street, and now you’re in this national position on LEED. What was it about what you were doing on Main Street in Kutztown that got you from here to there?

Scot: Yeah. And before that I was doing music. I think that one thing that I recognized and that has been the most useful for me is that I’ve been able to make the connection between things and why they matter. So…building furniture is very much like logic and it’s very much like music. The kinds of things I’m doing now, I think I’m able to do them uniquely because (and I’m not the only person that can do them) I understand how all those talents fit. So furniture for example: When I started my furniture company I knew I didn’t want to just make furniture for rich people out of really bad materials. I started looking for environmental materials. That led to being called to a meeting when one of the first LEED pilot projects was being built in Harrisburg. That led to me getting on one of the committees (LEED Committees) and starting a consulting company which ultimately led me from a volunteer perspective of a LEED program to a staff perspective.

Chuck: And they noticed you? Or you applied to them?

Scot: Well, I think they noticed me. I had been on several committees at U.S. Green Building Council and I was asked to run the Steering Committee after the person that had done it for the first six years had to retire. So they noticed me. They pulled me in. But, as you know Charlie, leadership is something that is noticeable. Leadership is when you’re helping people by providing a vision to a place they all want to go. That’s noticeable no matter who it is.

Chuck: Before we get into what LEED Certification is, I just want to ask you a philosophical question. It’s about the process of certification. In your opinion, can a certifying process such as LEED influence and change the market place for builders? And secondly, why should a person who is not in the building or architectural business care that there is a LEED certification process. Why should the average person care?

Scot: Well, there are a lot of ways to answer that. I think I would start by saying that the construction industry is one of the oldest, the most reluctant to change, and one of the most wasteful industries on the planet. What LEED has done basically is to try and help trim some of the fat. We trim fat by encouraging them to do the right thing. In a typical building, a commercial building especially, there is so much over-design. There is so much duplication. It is very easy through a different process, by being led by a system like LEED , to build a building for less money and have it save a lot of money. And use a lot less energy and a lot less water. Most importantly—why people should care about things like LEED, or LEED specifically, is that LEED buildings are really built around people. The old building you see when you’re driving down the street, especially the office building, is that the main things those architects used to think was curb-appeal. They wanted the building to look good as you’re driving by at 60 miles per hour. Green buildings are built from the inside out. Not the outside in. They’re built with people in mind. That means that they’re built for health—not health for just the people inside but for the people outside as well. They are built to use less energy, less water. And when you’re healthy there are a lot of huge benefits. If you’re an employer the typical cost for an employee in the northeast is about $224.00 per square foot (I can get you the actual number if you need it). It means that if your people are less sick, you’re going to make a lot more money. Real dollars pay back on a green building. It pays on an office building or a school. Those kinds of benefits are huge dollars. There’s a study that shows that a 2% decrease in absenteeism paid for the entire renovation of the Pentagon, because it was a nicer place to be. And then there are all these other benefits. The energy benefits are gigantic. It goes on and on.
Chuck: What does the acronym LEED stand for?

Scot: It stands for Leadership, Energy and Environmental Design.

Chuck: The way I understand this is that you design a list of things that certify a building? That gives LEED Certification?

Scot: Um—hmm.

Chuck: How does that process work? How do you go into making a list? And who’s involved?

Scot: The whole thing started back in the late 90′s. A group of people got together and went to one of the standard writing organizations, and they said we need a standard for rebuilding. It was ASTM. And they said okay, but that will take about five years through their process. So this group of people came up with a list of things that they knew buildings could do. And then the list got organized around categories. And then we created a series of committees that worked through those categories in different ways. We have several hundred people that are engaged in the LEED process at any given time through a whole variety of different LEED committees that my staff kind of services as well as provides vision for. We have technical committees that are based on the different categories. Let me walk through those because they’re kind of interesting. See, in LEED you have prerequisites. There are things you have to do. And then there are all these other—credits we call them. And they go to sites all related to sites—like Water-Management; Transportation. And then you move to Water Efficiency—reducing the amount of water that gets used in the building. And Energy Efficiency—optimizing that. Then materials. Then Indoor Environmental Quality. Those are the five basic categories. There is an Innovation category as well. Before LEED, what was happening was there were a lot of people involved in different interesting things that were green. For example, some would have recycle content and say it was a green building. Someone would do storm water management or solar and they’d call it a green building. What LEED did was say: Here are a whole host of ideas, and we’re going to agree that if you do a certain percentage of these we’re all going to call it a green building. And we’ll certify to higher levels depending on how many more of those ideas you accomplish.

Chuck: I see. So you have a strata, like say you accomplish 60% of them it’s one level of certification and 70% or 80% would represent another level of certification. Something like that?

Scot: Yes. So certified is 40 points out of a 100 point system. Silver is 50. Gold is 60. Platinum is 80.

Chuck: You know, as an outsider looking in, I found out about LEED through my son whose wife is an architect. In her firm every architect must become LEED certified.

Scot: LEED Accredited.

Chuck: Okay, Leed Accredited. I’m wondering how it is your organization created the acceptance level that it has in businesses around the country?

Scot: I was at the Swedish embassy the other night and this guy, the British diplomat John Ashton, was there and he asked all the environmental non-profits to raise their hands. And it was a relatively small group there preparing for Copenhagen. There were a lot of big names there. So we all raised our hands. And then he admonished. He said: If you aren’t in the economy, it’s just you and your little issues. What LEED has done is gotten into the economy. It’s gotten into the economy because we’ve done a very good job of showing that it makes a lot of financial sense to do this. Again, a lot of that comes from the fact that there has been so much waste. Not just that it makes financial sense. It makes sense in all these different perspectives. And you get acknowledged as a leader because you’re helping to change this old, ancient industry. To me that’s the really exciting part of it. The reason I’m so interested in it, is that I believe that LEED has become the core of a much larger movement. When you look at movements—they might start as architectural movements. The last big architectural movement was modernism in the middle of the last century. We’re the first architectural movement to come along combined with a social movement. What’s really exciting about this is that you don’t get the chance to be involved with something like this very often. It skips generations. So from my perspective, what you see in movements a lot of times is that they’re centered around documents and statements of purpose. LEED has become from my perspective relative to this larger movement. Companies start realizing—Whoa, we’re not even relevant if we don’t have all our people become LEED accredited because it becomes the way that they can define their own leadership.

Chuck: Do you look down the road and say that possibly buildings will have a greater resale value if they’re LEED certified?

Scot: Oh yeah! They do now.

Chuck: They do?

Scot: Yes. There is research that has basically shown that the buildings will rent for higher rents. They’ll sell for higher amounts. There are a lot of real estate investment trusts that are tying their work to LEED because they realize it is just a better investment. The reality of it is you just shouldn’t be building a bad building any more. LEED is the standard of what it means to be a decent building. But it also provides this chain that says here’s where you go to make it a really great building. To me, that’s where the answers are because buildings account for about 40% of our carbon dioxide emissions and they account for some 500 trillion gallons of water annually. Buildings have the ability to shift our environmental issues in a major way simply by the way we design and then occupy and manage them.

Chuck: I’d like to get into your thinking a little bit. You said, I think it was at the Kempton Energy Festival, what could be achieved by just turning the light off when you leave a room. There’s a lot of conservation in LEED thinking. Conserving resources for the future of the planet. I think there’s a lot of that in your thinking. Wouldn’t you say?

Scot: I think what I said was something like this. Every year there is about a billion square feet of new construction. So let’s take 2007 which was a banner year. And take that billion square feet and reduce the energy consumption by 70%. Reducing all the energy consumption in all the buildings occupying that billion square feet by 70%. It’s the same as going to the existing buildings, and there are about 150 million of them, and reducing energy by 1%. If I turn the lights off when I leave my house I can reduce my energy use by way more than 1%. So really small changes of behavior that are done by a lot of people can have a huge impact. That’s just a way to give you a sense of the magnitude of the impact. I have absolutely no question that if you and I were to go and look at our energy bills today, we could cut those by 20% to 30% very easily with a few really simple measures. Using simple technologies will allow you to turn off transformers that are running to turn the lights off when you leave the room. Or setting up technologies so the lights go off. Or using better technologies like compact fluorescents and things like that. The potential is so huge. If we think of what’s going on in the existing building stock, it’s very empowering, from my perspective, to the everyday person because they have a huge part to play in all of this.

Chuck: Is the LEED Certification an ongoing thing? Or is it a living thing where the list is changing into the future?

Scot: It’s a living thing. It’s always changing. And that’s one of the biggest challenges because we need to stay ahead of the market and keep it as a leadership standard. So when the market catches up we always need to keep moving…

Chuck: But not so fast that they won’t go.

Scot: Right. What’s the saying? Five steps ahead of me and I’ll follow you; a hundred steps I’ll stone you.

Chuck: On these committees that you have that actually develop the certifications, I would guess that there’s a strong builders’ presence.

Scot: Yes. And we have a lot of technical experts, engineers and architects. Building owners. Facilities managers.

Chuck: But you’re able to achieve consensus?

Scot: Well, that’s a tough thing.

Chuck: Yeah. I would think.

Scot: Yeah. I think you realize you’re trying to get a lot of people moving something that has large implications and your having to be a leadership tool pointing in a direction. You just can’t sit and let the committee talk. There’s so much knowledge that it kind of goes all over the place. You have to provide a direction. That direction can be synthesized by a number of different people. We have a lot of real strong leaders on the committees that do that. I always thought that it was one of the most important things that can be provided right now. Strong leadership to head a large group of people in the same direction.

Chuck: Could you describe for out readers what the top category LEED certified building would have that other buildings don’t?

Scot: The top level is platinum. If you’re a platinum building you probably have great access to public transportation. You most likely have dealt with some kind of rainwater budget so that water that’s falling on the site is staying on the site. You’re probably reducing water usage by over 50% to 60% beyond a typical building. You’re likely to be doing that with some renewable energy as well. You might have solar or wind associated with it. You have a lot of recycled content and your materials have been sourced locally. You probably have extremely good indoor air quality. If it’s an office building and there’s a lot of air exchange— very little or no volatile organic compounds in the air. And innovation. What you see in the real leadership buildings, there aren’t that many of them, is how far we know the market can go. There are enough now that you see how people can design and build and come up with stuff in a really innovative way that you just wouldn’t believe. And it leads us to where, I think, we’re going. Ultimately, buildings have to be part of the solution. Right now LEED is sort of based on doing less damage. You’re going to build a building, there’s going to be environmental impact. So we’ve got to figure out how to reduce that impact. What ultimately we know is that buildings have to become part of a world where they’re giving back. Where they’re creating more energy. Where they’re actually cleaning water. That’s the kind of place where we see LEED heading people toward.

Chuck: If you were King of the World, and you could have your will imposed on it, where would LEED be 10 years from now?

Scot: It’s interesting, having just returned from the EU. In the European Union many of the things that LEED is trying to get people to do in a voluntary program is law over there.. In a perfect world what I’d like to see is all parts of society stepping up. So I’d like to see government doing more. Government should require much tighter energy codes. I could see LEED playing a part in the economy in partnership with schools, government, companies. Multi-national corporations saying let’s figure out how our company can develop a really sustainable economy. Of course, new technologies will be part of the answer. And the people care enough to build places that are really loving, beautiful places to live in.

Chuck: In light of the fact that that we are a prisoner of OPEC to oil pricing, and that the world is rapidly using up its diminishing resources, it’s not an exaggeration to say that what you’re involved in here is not only the security of the United Stated, but ultimately the survival of the planet.

Scot: Well, I think so. But I think that’s what the larger movement is engaged in. LEED plays one part in that because buildings are such a significant player in carbon dioxide emissions, depending on how you draw the scope. Me getting to buildings has a lot to do with the overall scope and how I get back and forth to them. So—Yes! I mean, I believe so. But that’s what’s so exciting about it even as a movement. It’s so mission driven. People get pulled into it not because LEED is a standard, but because it’s a way to address about how I care about the way we live on this planet. The idea that everyone is part of a little piece of a whole picture. The tendency in the past is for people to think I’m just this little piece. I don’t matter. But that’s absolutely not the case. You are a piece and you do matter because it’s all little pieces. The pieces add up to a whole. LEED kind of helps show that, I think. How the decisions you make in your daily life impact everybody else and our future and our children’s future.

Chuck: This is a question you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to…

Scot: (laughs)

Chuck: I’m always interested in the politics of things. Since you’ve been in this position, are people trying to bend your ear from one interest group to another? Trying to influence the certification? What standards? What should or shouldn’t be on the list?

Scot: Oh, yeah! That’s unending.

Chuck: It’s unending?

Scot: Yeah. That’s been relentless. There are really hot button issues that consistently plague us as well. For example, we have one credit for a type of wood certification. Just to give you a sense, we had 1,800 comments on just the last version of that. We had 6,000 comments on the last version of LEED. That’s how engaged people are. That’s always going on. I was interviewed by FOX news last week. What’s happening now is that there are a lot of people criticizing LEED because now it’s become in the public eye enough. Now the criticism is coming back that maybe these buildings are not doing exactly what they’re supposed to be and they’re getting government incentives so the government should be doing something else. Now LEED itself is becoming politicized because it has become a big enough player.

Chuck: You’re big enough to worry about now.

Scot: Yes, exactly. Rush Limbaugh was talking about us the other day. It’s not partisan, but the extreme radical right is trying to change that. Aside from them, it’s been a non partisan issue. Everyone cares about it.

Chuck: Is it true that Barack Obama wants to get the White House LEED certified?

Scot: No. That was a…

Chuck: An internet myth?

Scot: Yeah, an internet myth. Whoever wrote that—I think it was in a blog. It was based on an article in the National Geographic months and months ago.

Chuck: I think the more hoopla you hear from the extreme right about LEED, the greater your success has been.

Scot: (laughs). Probably so.

Chuck: Where can my readers go to find out more about LEED and what you’re doing?

Scot: There are two websites. One is USGBC.org. Another one is greenbuild365.org. We have a National Conference in Phoenix this year. We’re very excited. Al Gore is going to do the kickoff. Sheryl Crowe is going to play right after him. A big celebration and then three days of education. We have 78 chapters, so the chapter community is how you know it’s really a movement. 78 chapters in all these different cities around the country. There’s one in Harrisburg and one getting set up in the Lehigh Valley. There’s one down in Philadelphia. And there are networking groups.They get together and talk about what we can do to get LEED into this area.

Chuck: You don’t have to be a builder to participate?

Scot: Oh, absolutely not. They’re really wide-ranging groups and they’re mostly about networking.

Chuck: That’s great. I thank you for your time Scot.

Scot: Thanks, Charlie.