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For the past 15 years, Portland architects like Jeff Myhre have viewed the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification as the benchmark for energy efficiency. A recent lawsuit filed against the U.S. Green Building Council, however, has called the effectiveness of the LEED program into question.

The lawsuit (PDF), filed by New York building energy consultant Henry Gifford, alleges that LEED’s goal of consistently creating more energy-efficient buildings doesn’t always deliver and that architects, building owners and others have paid money to the U.S. Green Building Council for inefficient buildings. While many design professionals dismiss the lawsuit as frivolous, Myhre thinks the case points out errors in LEED’s methodology, namely a lack of checks and balances to see if a building performs as designed.

“LEED’s marketing has proclaimed that if you meet a certain LEED standard, you’re going to have energy savings and protect the environment,” Myhre said. “But the U.S. Green Building Council doesn’t follow through to see if your building is efficient once it’s in operation. People look at me very strangely when I say LEED may not be measuring energy efficiency accurately. I’m not saying this case has validity or not, but if the USGBC is found to be in violation of the law, we have big problem.”

More architects should echo Myhre’s concern about the lawsuit, Portland construction and real estate attorney Joe Trippi said.

Increasingly, building owners are attempting to set forth expectations for energy efficiency to attract upscale purchasers, Trippi said, and when those expectations aren’t met, the purchasers are pursuing litigation. In New York, residents at the Riverhouse condominiums because their LEED gold-pursuing building was found to be energy inefficient, Trippi said. This type of lawsuit hasn’t occurred in Oregon yet, but Trippi said it’s only a matter of time.

“The Gifford case has received so much press that it will inevitably result in more lawsuits within the next 12 months,” Trippi said. “By questioning the validity of LEED certification for energy savings, there could be potential claims from homeowners and building owners.”

Another Portland attorney, however, disagrees that the Gifford case will result in any litigation locally. Howard Carsman of Bullivant Houser Bailey has spent 30 years advising Portland design professionals and general contractors on project delivery and risk management issues.

“It’s idiotic,” Carsman said. “From the pleadings I saw, this lawsuit has no basis in fact or in law. I am appalled that professionals would have the temerity to file such a lawsuit. Any owner who is halfway intelligent and consults with knowledgeable professionals will find this lawsuit meritless.”

Building owners are aware that LEED is a guide toward a more energy-efficient building, but not necessarily a promise for certain energy savings, said Susan Steward, executive director of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Portland. Owners work closely with architects and contractors before moving forward with a project to be sure they can get a return on their investment, Steward said. However, some owners have been foregoing LEED certification lately.

“Owners are doing energy-efficiency projects but they aren’t going after the plaque,” Steward said. “It’s expensive. If the return on investment isn’t there to begin with, most owners won’t proceed with a project.”

Portland developer and building owner Art DeMuro said he has been pleased with the energy performance of his LEED-certified projects, including the gold-certified in Old Town Chinatown. While DeMuro agrees that the green building industry needs to get better at fully evaluating building performance, he stresses the industry is a nascent one.

“It feels early in the process to have conclusive findings about the effectiveness of LEED (in regard to energy efficiency),” DeMuro said. “The LEED system has raised the bar for resource conservation and energy efficiency, especially in the Portland market. It’s a worthwhile venture and something we will continue to do with our projects.”

Most of the data used for the Gifford lawsuit ignores more recent versions of LEED that do address building performance post-construction, according to Clark Brockman, a principal with SERA Architects and board member of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, the Northwest chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council. Building owners pursuing LEED certification must now provide post-construction performance data as well as meet a checklist of energy-efficiency and green-building measures.

When a LEED building fails to perform to expectations, Brockman said, it often is the result of miscommunication between how the owner plans to operate the building and how the building is designed to be operated. If an office is energy modeled and designed for 12 employees with computers, for example, and 20 employees end up working in the space, that can affect the energy performance of a building.

“If we do a better job communicating about our assumptions of how an owner will operate a building, performance will improve,” Brockman said. “LEED is the on-ramp for the green building movement and it has exceeded everyone’s expectations.”

Only time will tell if LEED’s future will remain bright, Myhre said, but he remains concerned that most of the industry uses a standard run by a private group like the U.S. Green Building Council. Instead, he’d like to see the state of Oregon ramp up its building code to set enforceable goals for energy efficiency.

“LEED is the only widely expected way of measuring sustainability in buildings,” Myhre said. “And that’s because of the wonderful branding the company has done. It’s a monopoly and that’s a problem. We need a purely objective way of doing green buildings.”