Yes, there are alternatives to LEED.

Since there is extensive agreement with regard to what constitutes best energy and environmental practices, there are several green building standards in addition to LEED, such as Green Globes, BREEAM, the GBC tool, and the Minnesota Design Guidelines. These rating systems have more similarities than differences. While there is no legal definition of what a "green building" is, these organizations do a good job of creating broadly supported standards for green buildings, albeit in slightly different ways.

In terms of the alternatives, while LEED is the 800 lb gorilla and seems to get all the good press, Green Globes is gaining traction. Indeed, the parent company of Green Globes was recently acquired by a highly respected, established company: Jones Lang LaSalle.

Green Globes is often described as a LEED alternative because it is faster and less expensive in some ways to implement than LEED. Indeed, it seems to provide much needed simplicity for small commercial building owners. For $500.00 a building owner may go online and "self-certify" using GreenGlobes.com's certification wizard. LEED, as you seem to already know, requires (in all situations) professionals who are accredited "LEED AP"s, a fair amount of paperwork and 3rd party commissioning all of the steps that a building owner has taken to green his or her building which independently measures and verifies the building's operations according to LEED standards. This commissioning can be expensive (again... the point isn't to bash LEED, but it sounds like I'm preaching to the choir).

Energy efficiency is perhaps the fastest way for small building owners to reduce their operating costs, thereby increasing NOI. Green Globes uses an incremental rating system of one, two, three and four "globes" which indicates the level of "greenness" of a building in a similar way that LEED's rating system defines buildings as "certified", "silver", "gold" and "platinum".

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