Advice provided by: Sarah Gudeman, LEED AP, EIT, Morrissey Engineering, Inc.

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Louis asks: Is there a definitive resource based on actual case studies to determine and compare costing for LEED CI for restaurants? If not, how does one get hold of this information? Thanks!

Answer: Hi Louis, thanks for your question. Unfortunately I currently know of no such resource. It would be a fantastic tool to have though… a database of LEED case studies that compared many certified project costs. This is typically the first question that gets brought up after an owner decides to pursue LEED certification – and sometimes it’s the question that gets brought up before an owner decides to pursue LEED certification. I’ve looked at additional cost for the project to get certified, additional cost for higher certification levels Silver, Gold, Platinum, and even additional costs per individual credit and point. In addition, the costs for LEED certification can be broken up into even more categories for construction, design and documentation fees associated with the process. I guess what I’m getting at here is that yours is a common question and there is no concrete answer for that question.

To make things a little more complicated, your reference was specifically to LEED-CI, which is a far less common rating system than, say New Construction or Existing Buildings. And, a LEED-CI restaurant is even rarer still. It doesn’t mean it’s unheard of though. Out of the 999 LEED-CI certified projects listed on the USGBC project directory (which doesn’t yet include LEED 2009 projects), when we refine the search to just projects that have the word ‘restaurant’ in the title, the result is only one… the Wild Goose Restaurant in Tahoe Vista, CA, Certified under the LEED-CI Pilot in 2005. Of course there are likely other LEED-CI certified restaurants that weren’t registered with the word ‘restaurant’ in their title, but you see my point.

I recently read an interesting article on the costs associated with LEED prepared for The American Chemistry Council by Northbridge Environmental Management Consultants. The paper is called, “Analyzing the Cost of Obtaining LEED Certification”. To get a better idea of the content, I’d recommend reading the whole paper, which isn’t too cumbersome, as it’s only 14 pages and available online at http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/for_communities/LEED_links/Analyzingt....

This report breaks down LEED costs into soft costs, design costs, commissioning, documentation and energy modeling. Soft costs, activities associated with LEED that fall outside the range of construction costs, which come in at an average of 2.3% of total construction costs with a range of 1.5-3.1%. Design costs, additional time on part of the architect and engineer to perform LEED tasks adds 0.4-0.6% of the total construction cost.

There are other good resources and papers on LEED and green building costs available at USGBCs website, http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=77#economic_analysis. Ultimately the cost add for pursuing LEED certification is all relative to what the project’s original budget was and what types of energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly strategies and items were included in your original budget.

It’s an interesting topic, and one many people spend copious amounts of time analyzing. I imagine in the near future we’ll see an exponential increase in papers such as these. Hope that helps.