The U.S. Green Building Council upgraded the Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design certification of Northwestern’s Searle Hall this month.
Searle, one of six LEED-certified buildings at NU, received a silver LEED rating last year, which has now been promoted to gold.
The promotion was based on improved documentation in NU’s submittal, NU’s first sustainability director Rob Whittier wrote in an email to The Daily.
To achieve LEED certification, buildings are awarded points based on different areas of environmental design. These areas include site selection, water efficiency, energy efficiency and material selection. Buildings can receive up to 110 points, and these points determine whether they are labeled silver, gold or platinum.
Jay Baehr, project manager of NU Facilities Management Design and Construction, said Searle earned points from all categories. Baehr was the project manager for the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center, which became the first LEED-certified building at NU in 2006.
Baehr said after the construction of the design center, the University required LEED certification for all major capital construction.
“We took it as a good opportunity to implement this in the University environment,” Baehr said.
However, Madaline Goldstein, president of NU’s Environmental Campus Outreach, said there is more work to be done to make the campus more environmentally efficient, such as retrofitting older buildings to improve electricity use and heating distribution.
Whittier said NU has made a commitment to sustainability on both the Chicago and Evanston campuses. He said NU has worked with engineering firms to audit the campuses and is investing $40 million to improve energy efficiency.
Besides aiming for gold-level certification for NU’s new music building and visitors center, Whittier said the University is creating a plan for assessing and certifying existing buildings, based on the LEED for Existing Buildings Rating System. He said the University hopes to begin evaluating buildings as a pilot for the plan this summer.
“We want to understand how we can operate our buildings in a sustainable and efficient manner,” Whittier said.
