During the past couple of decades, developing buildings that are actually sensitive
to the needs of the environment has started to be a common trend. Today, the green
building movement has reached all corners of the United States and even the world. The
United States Green Building Council formed the Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) rating system to serve as a guideline for measuring the
degree to which a building is considered to be environmentally friendly and “green”. The
LEED system outlines a number of requirements necessary to achieve one of four
different certification levels: Platinum, Gold, Silver or Certified. Each of these levels
requires a different number of points awarded based on achievement of various credits
during the design and construction phases of a building project. The purpose of this
study is two-fold. First, it is to explore the green building movement and discuss the
overall benefits of building green. Included in this is a discussion of what it actually
means to develop a LEED Certified building, and what a building’s certification status
means for both short and long-term costs and benefits toward meeting a developer’s
desired bottom line. Secondly, building on that investigation, a determination will be
made as to whether or not it is financially viable for a developer to construct a LEED
Certified building in Austin, Texas and still achieve his or her desired bottom line as it
relates to his or her profit margin. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/22174 |
| Date | 14 November 2013 |
| Creators | Bean, David Lawrence |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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