Advice provided by: Rob Freeman Jr, LEED AP, Green-Buildings.com

Share

Pat asks: First, thanks for your past help in answering some of our questions. Here is another from our seminar group. Understanding that each of the five credit categories have prerequisites, if a team decides NOT to pursue a particular category, do they still need to meet the prerequisite for that category? We are getting conflicting information from the various study resources guides on this matter.

Answer: Hi Pat, thanks for your question. The short answer is yes, all prerequisites are needed in order to achieve even the most basic LEED certification level.

Prerequisites are mandatory for any category in which there is a prerequisite listed. In most LEED systems, this includes:

Water Efficiency:
Energy and Atmosphere:
Materials and Resources:
Indoor Environmental Quality:

For instance, in the LEED for Interior Design + Construction rating system, because there are no Sustainable Sites prerequisites, you could choose to not pursue any of the sustainable sites credits and still achieve LEED certification. This is also the case for Innovation in Design, which is considered by many to fall into the "nice to have but not necessary" category.

Hope this helps!