THE
LEED STANDARD CREATES INCENTIVES
FOR USE OF NEW BUILDING TECHNOLOGY.
LEED®,
which is short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design,
is a voluntary, consensus-based national point rating system, which was
established in March 2000 for developing high-performance, sustainable
buildings. Building industry leaders formed the United
States Green Building Council (USGBC) to oversee the LEED
program and to “promote buildings that are environmentally
responsible, profitable and healthy places to work. It is leading a new
consensus for producing a new generation of buildings that deliver
performance both inside and out.”
LEED-EB
and LEED-NC provide a point rating system for
maintenance standards on existing buildings (EB)
and for new construction (NC) to achieve
quantified energy use reduction. The goal is to reduce Heat
Island Effect, the phenomena of overheating caused by cities
due to their clustered buildings’ absorbsion and reradiation
of the sun’s thermal energy as contrasted to open,
undeveloped terrain. Reflectance and emittance standards can be met by
utilizing the correct solar-reflective/ thermally emissive top coats.
Buildings that achieve this earn 1 credit point
towards their “LEED Certification”
under LEED Credit 7.2 for roofs.
Additionally, LEED Credit 7.1, specifies
for the “non-roof surfaces”(exterior walls) that
qualified solar-reflective coatings can also achieve 1
credit point.
The
Ultimate Coatings Company’s ECO-THERM™
Elastomeric, when
applied to flat/ low slope roofs, as well as walls, and our THERMO-SEAL™
when correctly applied to walls, contributes to the capability to be LEED
compliant by reducing energy consumption for
air-conditioning. As cool roof coatings, they can match or exceed the
.65 initial solar reflectance and .90 emissivity standards required
under LEED depending upon the color
chosen. In their cool wall coating versions, both of these products are
available in colors that exceed the .30 solar reflectance LEED
requirement and qualify for 1 LEED Credit point.
ECO-THERM™
Elastomeric in
our colors EcoWhite, Greywynd and Castlemaine (white, gr(a)y, beige)
all meet the LEED criteria. When applied as cool roof coatings, on
existing buildings and new construction, they qualify for 1
LEED Credit point.
The
Ultimate Coatings Company is a new member of the USGBC.
For information on our solar-reflective coatings, please see:
www.ultimatecoatings.net.
The LEED
standard has been adopted nationwide by federal agencies, state and
local governments, and interested private companies as the guideline
for sustainable building. For more information, visit www.usgbc.org/LEED
Copyright
2008 (Rev.1/15/08), Michael Biel, The Ultimate Coatings
Company. All rights reserved. www.ultimatecoatings.net