Colleges and Universities have made great strides in greening their buildings and infrastructure.

Yet greening a campus takes more than just enhancing the performance of individual buildings. Institutions will need to consider methods for integrating sustainable practices into the complete life cycle of a campus starting from the master planning to the daily operations and maintenance. The LEED Green Building Rating Systems can serve as a framework and help to guide an institutions journey to a sustainable future.

The LEED Green Building Rating Systems encourage and accelerate global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices that recognize projects that implement strategies for better environmental and health performance.

LEED serves both as a single building certification as well as a benchmark for campus greening efforts and measuring progress. Many of the LEED credits can be applied to campus-wide policies and programs, used to set design standards, improve master development planning and specifications, and ultimately help to institutionalize sustainability efforts.

LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance offers the best way to address a campus’ existing building stock and take a dent out of carbon emissions on campus.