To LEED or Not to LEED: Analysis of Cost Premiums Associated With Sustainable Facility Design

:Many organizations have established policies authorizing a “green” cost premium to fund sustainable design. In order to determine whether or not this practice is supported, we collected construction, cost, and utility data on a sample of 160 LEED certified buildings. Using simple correlation and descriptive statistics to analyze the resulting database, we found operating costs in LEED certified buildings were $0.70 per square foot less than non-LEED buildings, energy costs were 31% lower, and cost premiums ranged from 2.5 to 9.4% with a mean of 4.1%. Correlation analysis suggests there are very few statistically significant correlations among the design variables.