It is comforting to see this discussion continues the great HN tradition of having a lively and wide-ranging debate about a complex scientific article or paper without ever bothering to read the article and paper.
This is a rather complex paper, so I perused it for about five minutes. As such I consider my self a one eyed man among a hoard of shouting extremely opinionated blind people, so you should all listen to me carefully and follow me as your leader.
And now that I have your attention I shall carefully summarize the paper so none of you have to undergo the indignity of perusing it for five minutes.
1. Leeds is not solely for energy efficiency but also for solving other environmental problems such as water use.
2. In buildings where the energy efficiency was the main problem to be solved, the leeds overhaul was actually effective at improving energy efficiency.
3. In buildings where water use was the main problem to be solved, the leeds process was also successful in reducing water use, but actually increased energy use. This is because the water reduction process invariably included complex electrical systems with a lot of sensors and control circuitry that ate up extra power.
4. Considering points 2. and 3. above when you add all the buildings up as a whole, on average energy use did not decrease after a leeds overhaul and certification.
My thinking here is that this does not mean LEEDS is a failure. The study shows that there was improvement in every building that underwent the certification, it is just that for some buildings energy wasn't the highest priority. In many parts of the US water use is much more important than energy efficiency.
So I am sure for many parts in the US it is a very good trade off to increase energy use for lower water use. (This would certainly be true for the entire southwest, at least).
But there is still a lot of room for improvement. The water preservation systems can themselves be made more energy efficient. At first glance, these systems do not do something that requires a lot of energy -- all they do is communication, sensing and opening or closing small water valves.
Generally speaking there is a lot to be desired of analog circuit design. Now that we are surrounded by always on always connected electrical devices, this is something we as a nation should start paying attention to. There are a lot of always on circuits that use 10 or 100 times the power they should, just because someone wanted so save 50c on parts or they simply did not how to properly design the thing.
> My thinking here is that this does not mean LEEDS is a failure. The study shows that there was improvement in every building that underwent the certification, it is just that for some buildings energy wasn't the highest priority. In many parts of the US water use is much more important than energy efficiency.
I was going to read the paper tonight. I do appreciate your summary.
One thing I've been doing lately is to highlight the fact that nothing in life is reduced to a single variable problem. No, a cow is not a uniform sphere of milk one meter in diameter.
I've been doing this because of just how many discussions seem to take one variable and assign to that one variable the entire end result of whatever it might be that is being discussed. Frankly, it's maddening. I couldn't even name something that, in the real world, is an honest single-variable problem (I'm sure someone will find something now and point it out; OK, now go find ten!).
The biggest issue I see is that LEEDs allow for a building that looks like a big heat exchanger, and has zero heat insulation to certify for high power efficiency in a cold climate.
Canada, and Toronto area had tons of LEEDs certed luxury condos being heated like no tomorrow in Winter.
Things are even worse in Vancouver, but that's offset by milder weather.
The opposite picture is there in hot climates.
Building with exposed balcony slabs, and curtainwalls in +40C° climates, guzzling electricity for aircons.
I think the West needs to look up more for economical building designs from nations living in extremes.
Gulf countries learned how to build economically in +50C°
Nordic ones for -30C° in Winter
None of them spend as much as US, and Western Europe on heating, or cooling despite way more severe climates.
All those vanities like PV panels, solar water heaters, rainwater collection, turbines, etc — all totally pale in comparison to just proper thermal design of a building, and slashing its heating bill.
Joseph Lstiburek talked about this(1) in talks going back to the early 2010s. He bitched about bike racks being worth a LEED point whereas good insulation wasn't really...
Good insulation and isolation can also help substantially with privacy and tranquility. Good airflow can help human health and reducing externalizes that aren't well measured by a single building's certification.
I live in an apartment in Toronto that is LEED certified. To be honest, it's not that great but for different reasons than you outlines. The insulation is too good and so the building is too warm all year round. My unit can easily be > 24C without any heating running even in winter.
Is it possible that all of your neighbors in your building have their heater on? This is what happened to me in a building in NYC. It would actually get so warm in the winter I would have to crack the window open or I would get a nose bleed.
As someone who also lives in Toronto: most things being built now are giant class towers.
Now, glass sucks at insulation (even triple glaze), but—depending on the coatings—it lets in a lot of sun light and with that potentially heat.
While in a perfect world there would be no / minimal exchange between the inside of the structure and the outside,† being too warm may be better than being too cold, as I'm guessing that it's easier to throw away the 'free' heat of the sun away than introducing it in winter. Certainly heat pumps can go either way, but I figure that it's easier to dump it.
† The entire point of "buildings" are to be environmental separators after all.
As you heat some air the relative humidity drops. If your room is not leaky, the relatively humidity will rise as it cools back off, but if you're constantly leaking air your indoor humidity will approach that of the outside air raised to the indoor temp.
This is why energy recovery ventilators exist-- to exchange outside air without losing or gaining as much relative humidity change.
Yes. I'm not completely sure the mechanism, but I attended elementary school in a warm climate, at a school in which the hallways were exterior and only classrooms air conditioned. I reliably got nosebleeds on the three or four hottest days of th year in line for class.
Are you sure it's because of the insulation? Many condos are sweltering in the middle spring (even with heat off) because residents living on floors below yours crank the heat and it all rises.
When I lived in a condo (Bloor/Yonge), the situation was so bad (12th floor) that if it hit 12°C outside, I needed to turn on the A/C, which is awful from an environmental POV.
Yep, and this is why central control, along with temperature sensors make a giant lot of sense to prevent such situation.
A simple thermostat is not enough, and even a PID one will not do the job if external thermal influx is not in the model.
I once worked on a HVAC controller for hotels in Singapore, and other commercial venues which helped the hotel operator to save on HVAC by packing visitors more closely depending on occupancy.
This avoid paradoxical situations of it being chilling cold in some suites with zero aircon use when it is +30 outside because of an unlucky combination of HVAC settings in neighbouring suites.
Doesn't all this imply there should be more focus on inter-floor and inter-room insulation, to effectively isolate floors/apartments/suites thermally from each other?
Quite possible parent was heating the loop water with their a/c which the North-facing residents extracted running their system in heat mode.
Which makes it all an incredibly inefficient system to move heat from the sun-facing side to the north side because you’re not allowed to prop open the damn doors.
Insulation doesn't simply make a building warmer inside, it keeps heat out just as well as it keeps heat in. If your apartment is too warm in the winter it is probably because you have too much sunlight coming through your windows, or because your downstairs neighbor lives in a sauna.
Keeping heat out is of somewhat limited use unless you have air conditioning, because there are a whole bunch of sources of heat (people, appliances, solar gain through the windows, etc) that are enough to make the inside of a well-insulated and well-sealed building warmer than the outside. Also, a lot of non-US countries strongly discourage aircon on residential buildings for environmental reasons; I know the UK certainly does and Canada is probably similar.
I don't know much about LEEDs and maybe that should be updated, but I live in a cold climate and I see a lot of focus on insulation and insulation efficiency, both in new construction and updating old buildings.
This idea that there's not a focus on insulation in the west seems kinda strange to me.
The problem is engineers look at this like engineers and make assumptions and decisions based on the objectives given and their toolkit. When you hire an ASHRAE certified engineer, he’s going to be all about HVAC, based on whatever the architect produced.
Usually that means a focus on less energy usage. That frequently doesn’t align with lower cost or optimal solution. For example, buying a 95% efficient boiler for my home would cost significantly more over its useful life when you account for capital costs, retrofit for exhaust, and operational/maintenance expense (efficient units require annual inspection and maintenance via service contract). 80% results in more fuel consumption, but significant lower TCO.
In commercial or larger buildings, the obsession with sealing windows introduces lots of waste. The cost of more heating efficiency is more A/C days.
Also, the practices around construction have changed, driven partially by “efficiency” to build boxes with no passive ventilation. If you go into a well-designed circa 1910 building like a school, office and other inhabited spaces had higher ceilings, higher windows, etc that permitted passive ventilation. My house in upstate NY is like this... we use air conditioning for <20 days a year, and our extra heating costs are negligible. My neighbor’s circa 1995 house is a modern series of interconnected boxes — they have to run AC from June-September because there is no effective ventilation.
I know you only said "partially by efficiency", but the other part is pretty important. another goal of sealing the building is to align the moisture and thermal barriers with each other. this is important, because this is how you control humidity inside the envelope. in theory, this makes it much less likely that you get mold, rot, etc. if you're going to heat/cool your house at all, you really don't want heated inside air getting cooled down in the winter or warm outside air getting cooled in the summer. if you have significant passive ventilation, you don't really have a moisture or thermal barrier.
Agreed — I was trying to capture a lot in a small space without being hand-wavy. (Not sure if I succeeded)
My big “beef” is that assumptions that require active, intelligent building management and maintenance have their own risks. These are hard to quantify and thus discounted.
Case in point: I worked for a decade in a building with professional management and all sorts of efficiency programs where chronic issues like a leaking roof were ignored for 30 years. In theory, the HVAC did a great job of moisture control. In reality, there was 3 feet of water on the roof. (Water wins) Point being, budgets drive suboptimal behavior.
In my personal case, my house was designed with features that permit user-controlled airflow and thermal flow. It has modern windows, enhanced attic ventilation, etc that improve performance. Many buildings are not and are dependent on active ventilation to be livable or mold-free.
Can concur here in Western Europe. For more than a decade we've had a regulation where you have to run your plans for a new building through a tool that calculates a score reflecting the projected energy consumption in a broad sense. The maximum allowed score has been adjusted down every few years.
The effect is indeed that all new buildings (and renovations that involve some kind of constructing new volumes) have improved massively in energy consumption. Still, we have such a massive amount of old buildings with next to none insulation that get renovated so slowly that it will take a long time to actually make a decent dent in reducing our climate footprint.
But there's definitely a good focus on improving our buildings. Main issue with these new buildings is no longer having decent insulation to keep heating costs down but making sure they don't overheat when there's good weather, and ventilating them properly. This is also part of the score calculation but in my experience not sufficiently highlighted.
Even if you can't use the same techniques that he does (and pay for some of the premium products), it may be possible to still use some of the general theory / principles.
Matt's videos are worth watching, but it's important to note most his videos are motivated by his sponsorships and it's often hard to parse out when he's shilling and when he's not.
Betters resources with real science can be found at
Just because he's sponsored does not necessarily mean he's wrong: he's been beating this drum for many years before the sponsorships came. Sort by date and check out the potato quality videos from long ago, and you'll see the same principles being talked about.
Though certainly, if you're going to do a build yourself, research any specific products to see if they meet your needs, functionally and monetarily.
* He tends to build on the higher end of things, and has clients that are willing to pay. Of course he's currently building his own new home, and doing things the way he's talked about.
* He's in a warm-humid climate (US Climate Zone 2). Plenty of things I wouldn't do exactly the same since I'm in Canada.
But Joe Lstiburek was born and raised in Canada, and lives in the north-east, and he's saying many of the same things when it comes to building science:
Yah, I'm not arguing that Matt is saying incorrect things, I'm saying his videos need extra scrutiny because he is sometimes using his videos for advertising and gives less than accurate portrayals of certain products. It looks like one his more egregious videos has been removed wherein he's reviewing types of siding and has some pretty laughable "tests" that he recreates inconsistently in order to prove fiber cement siding is superior to all other siding.
Additionally, to my knowledge, Matt isn't originating any of these ideas, he's just implementing them.
I don't mean to be so hard on Matt, I excitedly watch almost every new video of his and I'm excited there are people out there making building science more accessible. I just wish he'd so a slightly better job differentiating between shilling and presenting information.
You’re barking at the wrong tree, I’m buying a condo and the outside walls and the roof are common goods. I don’t have a technical issue but a human one: what in the neighbor’s mind? And how is their wallet feeling about huge work right now?
Then we can talk r-values, zoning rules, permitting and planning.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a technophile, I watch American construction shows, and I bought a bunch of books on renovation at the same time as the condo, but it’s only a small part of what has to be done.
From my experience on short stints in Dubai, and Qatar, single house residentials can well be both. Lots of villas there built with foam concrete exterior walls, in which you are living like in a thermos, and which still look rather conventional.
Their highrises are probably a bit more avant-garde than American ones, but nevertheless they sell like cookies.
> Canada, and Toronto area had tons of LEEDs certed luxury condos being heated like no tomorrow in Winter. Things are even worse in Vancouver, but that's offset by milder weather.
That's called Green Washing. Now, Snow Washing is the process in which dirty money is brought into Canada to purchase said assets.
† Air is exchanged in a controlled fashioned: filtered for pollen and other things, and then tempered with an HRV/ERV. Buildings do not need to 'breathe':
Certain building materials need to breath. Buildings built with green wood which has more moisture than ambient, and buildings with cast concrete will shed water vapor for some time. If this can be managed, it is fine.
Additionally, through all insulation there is an internal temperature gradient. If the there are discontinuities it is possible to get condensation when the temperature / dew point align just wrong. This can happen in in humid climates with inadequate insulation - especially fiberglass where moisture can easily penetrate the fiberglass to reach the colder outside walls.
I agree, though. Air tightness and continuous insulation coupled with well-engineered ventilation is best.
As explained in the linked video, they actually need to dry. This does not need to happen to the outside environment. IMHO, using the two terms (dry/breathe) interchangeably is causing confusion, as each has certain connotations in many people's minds.
The person in that video lives in Austin, Texas, and when he builds or renovates structures he has a stand-alone, whole-house dehumidifier designed into the HVAC system (the client can of course reject the suggestion):
> If the there are discontinuities it is possible to get condensation when the temperature / dew point align just wrong.
Which, as explained in the first link (BSI-001), is why you want external insulation (if possible); some portion of the insulation being continuous is code in many places nowadays. That way the condensation occurs on the outside of the water/vapour control layer. Joe Lstiburek:
This is harder to do with renovations, but is code in most places. In Ontario, Canada the code (IIRC) also specifics what minimum portion of the insulation that should be on the 'outside' of the vapour control layer: the colder the region the more has to be external, so that condensation happens on the outside of the structure.
Having it 100% external is ideal, but would cause trade-offs in other aspects of the building, which may not be desirable. An example of such a structure:
Here in Boulder County, new BuildSmart regulations will require new and renovated structures to pass a "Blower Door Test" Does Ontario not have any of those requirements for commercial or residential?
Agree on the continuous insulation. Very hard to do for Renovations. Fortunately in Colorado, it is so dry that the vapor barrier is slightly less important than in places like new england.
>Additionally, through all insulation there is an internal temperature gradient. If the there are discontinuities it is possible to get condensation when the temperature / dew point align just wrong.
Which is a good benefit of spray foam insulation. Your insulation is your air barrier and even if there was moisture in the pores of some open cell foam, it's not going to cause issues.
The problem I have with this is if #1 ever fails, and lets be honest, it will eventually, then #2 means you'll get mold and its game over.
Heat transfer mechanisms, in order of amount of heat moved typically follow: conduction, convection, and radiation and should be addressed in that order while not ignoring moisture content. Mitigation strategies should default to passive measures. Or at least that's my plan if I ever get around to building a house.
If you wish to argue against Joe Lstiburek, a PhD who has been doing building science for probably over thirty years (both academic research and field work/consulting), go right ahead.
He has taken failures into account because a good portion of his career has been studying / consulting on failures:
What he's suggesting is an ERV or HRV. You still get air exchange, as much as you want, but now you're passing that air through a heat exchanger and a "humidity exchanger" so you're not wasting all of that energy to condition that air. Another big benefit, now you don't have that moist outside air passing through fiberglass insulation batts in the walls working like growth media for mold.
As far as VOCs, you can crank up the air exchange to something on par with what a leaky building would do naturally. Even if you didn't, VOC off gassing should be basically the same rate. It's not going to accumulate enough in the air to substantially change the amount slowly coming out of paint, carpet, drywall, etc. If the air exchange rate was e.g. half then that should almost double the VOCs in the air.
I would hope it's an exponential drop off, and you could even wedge doors open and drive ahead of things and then go back into a more passive house fully sealed state.
That's not going to get it to come out of the material faster, that'll just reduce the amount in the air. You're still stuck waiting for it to permeate out of paint, carpet, adhesives, etc. You could increase ventilation to get the VOCs in the air to an acceptable level faster, but you're not substantially increasing the rate at which it's coming out of the materials.
It is interesting that this is surfacing just as another similar scam is making the rounds[1], Well [2]. An older product, apparently, that has now been rebranded and updated to take advantage of fears around COVID. They purport to be a certifications company, like LEED, that can evaluate a business or building and determine if it meets certain arbitrary standards around being "safe" in the health sense.
If they can get an insurance company to give a break on liability insurance based on the certification, then they're ready to make bank off of companies looking to attract customers in the wake of COVID.
The article points out that LEED certification is about more than just energy efficiency, and a building can obtain LEED certification without being energy efficient by focusing on other LEED areas.
I worked in a LEED gold building. One summer weekend, I stopped by the office to pick something up and noticed that the AC was still fully operational and keeping the building cool, despite there being no one in the building.
I did a small project for one of the founders of the LEED standard. I am in favor of the project and lacking details right this minute so I won't argue its merits BUT I can say that ... building specs are super useful, at the right time. Changes to a building can be very difficult, time-consuming and expensive, amidst a business model in West that emphasizes short-term money flow constantly. It is hugely difficult to get building owners and their insurance companies, to agree to anything. So this fellow who happens to strongly identify with Stanford University, was a basket case of nerves and ego, with expensive office suite and lots of helpers who appear nervous. I myself laid out a technical argument for a proposed software design, and less than ten minutes in to it, it was clear that the guy was not listening, and then interrupted me to start basically having a fit about different project pressures.
My impression after the whole, small project was over was that this is a person who lives in a world of wealth and status, and has to interact with others like that, who do not get along, or are constantly "jousting" .. I believe this fellow means well in the largest ways, but really the feeling overall was more like some kind of Arab Sheik than tech business.. I want LEED and things like it to succeed. I think this is a terribly hard thing to get going in reality. I feel this guy had too much pressure and was sort of losing it in a way ..
Normal people worry about having a good job and saving for retirement. People in that world worry about things like UN Sustainable Development Goals. It’s a weird status thing they do, and I’m not sure we’re better off for it. I guess it beats the castle-building days of yore.
I haven't built LEED, but how we build can for sure save energy. After building 3 homes in the USA, some basic updates to building codes would likely do more good than LEED will ever do.
It is so hard to convince people that the codes are the minimum. Who wants a product built to the minimum standard? Why doesn't the "market" demand it? Because people want cheap houses and the builder doesn't have to live in it or pay the utility bill. Buyers don't often ask for or compare bills on similar homes, so there is no point to upgrading insulation or HVAC unless you plan to stay in the home.
My oh-so-official-and-comprehensive-data:
One home I built was very typical for the neighborhood, except insulation and a slightly better HVAC system, nothing exotic. When the power was out and everyone was complaining that their houses were 40 degrees, we were still at 60. Our bills were sometimes half what our neighbors were. What did it take? About $4,000 on a $250,000 build (in 2007). The new owners of the home didn't know what they were getting b/c nobody asks or cares. We keep in touch and they've found the same when comparing to the neighborhood. If you are wondering, no the house didn't sell for more because it saves energy and money - that isn't on a real estate comp.
If we would just tweak the building codes just a tiny bit and it would make a huge difference.
I once lived in a LEED certified apartment complex. Unfortunately, I do not recall the specifics of their certification. My hot water would never get hot enough. I realized the hot water heater had a device on it to limit how often heating occurred. I promptly disabled it and had normal hot water again.
One of the other "green" aspects of the complex was that it only had compact car parking. However, the area I live in is rural/suburban and a very large portion of renters here work in the shale oil fields of the area. These workers drive trucks. Big trucks. The parking lot was always cramped mess. I often pondered the irony there and also how much more carbon was emitted by the body shops fixing all the dented doors.
> One of the other "green" aspects of the complex was that it only had compact car parking.
I think this is one of the things that as I get older gets more and more grating. This 'nudge' is supposed to encourage you to use and buy a smaller car, but instead of you as an individual selecting the car most suited for your needs they've decided that only compact cars should be driven. So now if you have a big family (which in today's age is only 3 kids), or you need your vehicle for work (hi work trucks), or a host of other reasons to have a bigger vehicle, they've intentionally made your life just a little bit worse, and they've done it intentionally.
That may not have been for LEED, many areas in the US have anti-scalding regulations for buildings or landlords/operators - typically not to exceed 120F at the tap. May have been set low depending on how many taps, distance between the different taps etc.
Summary: Operational energy efficiency is one of several goals of LEED, and in practice it's not high priority enough to be (statistically significantly) improved, in the sample of buildings they have data on, in the time period they took the data.
LEED is a joke. My dad used to manage a large office building in chicago and the certification was done by the building management itself. The guy collecting the data asked all the tenants for the info and threw out all the reports that made the building look bad. They got leed certification.
I'm also for more efficient use of resources but I'm skeptical LEED actually improves this. Also, all those curtain walled buildings are hideous and destroy the built environment.
LEED sucks. This has been known for a long time. But instead of bashing it, we should be asking: is there an alternative? If not, how could we create one?
> Trade-offs across LEED attributes account for the absence of energy savings on average. If energy efficiency is the primary policy goal, LEED certification may not be the most effective means to reach that goal.
The frustration I have with environmentalism is this. There's this enthusiasm for environmentalism that seems to be blind to outcome. A new standard for buildings, cars, circuit boards -- whatever -- is met with accolades. However, the opponents of such a standard clearly want the planet to die and suffer. It's time to listen to science!
Then a decade later, the program is assessed, and found to be ineffective, and the same people who were so enthusiastic shake their heads as if they've always known there would be such problems.
Fun story! Bureaucracy doesn't solve problems, it creates them!
"There's this enthusiasm for environmentalism that seems to be blind to outcome."
I am completely stealing this line, because it explains the modern environmental movement perfectly. I've argued with so many people about the Paris Accords and how they are a terrible idea. Why? Because they heap regulation on the West while sending money to China and India who have no obligation to improve their environmental policy. This will result in even more manufacturing leaving the semi-regulated West and moving to totally unregulated China which will increase net pollution, and that's before you factor in transit pollution.
Nobody can explain to me why this is wrong and that Paris Accords are actually terrible for the global environment, but its still awful the US wouldn't sign them because "we have to do something!"
> Because they heap regulation on the West while sending money to China and India who have no obligation to improve their environmental policy.
Both China and India are signatories of the Paris Accords. They are aiming to meet their targets. The US, at least for the four previous years, wasn't even in the Accords and not trying to do much in that time.
There are no regulations in the Accords, just a goal with regards to carbon emissions. If you want minimal regulations to achieve that, either introduce a cap-and-trade system (like Bush 41 did for acid rain), or introduce price signalling via carbon pricing, as recommended from four former Federal Reserve chairs (including Greenspan):
> Nobody can explain to me why this is wrong and that Paris Accords are actually terrible for the global environment, but its still awful the US wouldn't sign them because "we have to do something!"
Perhaps no one can explain why it's wrong because it is not wrong? The Paris Accords are not about "the global environment", they are specifically about one thing: carbon emission. Specifically reducing them by a certain amount.
Reducing them is great. Trusting China to self-regulate their emissions is the height of stupidity. Us paying China to then turn around and lie is even dumber yet.
Want to reduce CO2? You'll need to embargo China and then start ramping up domestic regulation.
I've always liked the term "not on my watch". It probably derives from the maritime world, but is useful in my sysadmin career.
In many (larger) organizations you cannot ensure everything is running smoothly all the time. But you can look after everything in your own (IT) wheel house.
As a Canadian I cannot do much about China's (or India's) action, but I can do stuff about what happens in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where I live.
So I will push for progress where I can, with the things under 'my watch', because it is the right thing to do. Doing the right thing yourself is sometimes the only thing you can do.
The thing about global pollution, it's global. The actors you are pushing to progress don't have to stick around, they can just pick up and move. If you clean up your house, you didn't really clean up the problem, you just moved it somewhere else, making the problem worse.
We have two primary findings. First, our estimates show no effect of LEED certification on average energy consumption measured in kBTUs/ft2. Second, the absence ofan effect seems to be driven by trade-offs across LEED attributes. Buildings with higherenergy scores have greater energy efficiency post-certification. Some other attributes, no-tably higher water scores, decrease energy efficiency post-certification. These trade-offs across LEED attributes seems to account for the absence of energy savings on average.
a building i used to work in got retrofitted to be leads certified. it got a new front door vestibule. the doors don't hang right, it's obstructive for people with different mobility needs. it leeks air like a tattered balloon. none of the glaring issues in the basement were fixed. it got a leed certification.
nobody really cares, it's just all a sham. no real point to leeds certs other than polishing a turd.
“I found a flaw in a LEED certified building, I ignored any other possible beneficial knock on effects of that flaw or other enhancements. Therefore LEED has no beneficial effect, either here or anywhere else.”
The point of certifications is that they make particular promises. If those promises are obviously broken, why bother? This is like a priest asking, "so what if God doesn't actually exist?"
This is a rather complex paper, so I perused it for about five minutes. As such I consider my self a one eyed man among a hoard of shouting extremely opinionated blind people, so you should all listen to me carefully and follow me as your leader.
And now that I have your attention I shall carefully summarize the paper so none of you have to undergo the indignity of perusing it for five minutes.
1. Leeds is not solely for energy efficiency but also for solving other environmental problems such as water use.
2. In buildings where the energy efficiency was the main problem to be solved, the leeds overhaul was actually effective at improving energy efficiency.
3. In buildings where water use was the main problem to be solved, the leeds process was also successful in reducing water use, but actually increased energy use. This is because the water reduction process invariably included complex electrical systems with a lot of sensors and control circuitry that ate up extra power.
4. Considering points 2. and 3. above when you add all the buildings up as a whole, on average energy use did not decrease after a leeds overhaul and certification.
My thinking here is that this does not mean LEEDS is a failure. The study shows that there was improvement in every building that underwent the certification, it is just that for some buildings energy wasn't the highest priority. In many parts of the US water use is much more important than energy efficiency.
So I am sure for many parts in the US it is a very good trade off to increase energy use for lower water use. (This would certainly be true for the entire southwest, at least).
But there is still a lot of room for improvement. The water preservation systems can themselves be made more energy efficient. At first glance, these systems do not do something that requires a lot of energy -- all they do is communication, sensing and opening or closing small water valves.
Generally speaking there is a lot to be desired of analog circuit design. Now that we are surrounded by always on always connected electrical devices, this is something we as a nation should start paying attention to. There are a lot of always on circuits that use 10 or 100 times the power they should, just because someone wanted so save 50c on parts or they simply did not how to properly design the thing.