Is LEED More Popular Than Green Building Itself?

While there are many green building certification systems, including ENERGY STAR, Green Globes, Living Building Challenge, etc., USGBC's marketing of LEED has been so effective that LEED is now synonymous with the concept of green building.

Indeed, LEED as a brand is so well-known, it may even be more popular as a term than the concept it is becoming synonymous with!

Just as Google is synonymous with search, in the public's mind green building and LEED increasingly have the same meaning. Like Google, even if it's in a tongue in cheek way, LEED is sometimes used as a verb. I mean, if I had a nickel for every time I saw a blog post that so and so is "LEEDing" the way, ahh well, you know the rest...

What Does LEED Mean to You?

So, is the term "LEED" (short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) really synonymous, or even more well-known than green building? It's interesting to look at how the terms "Green Building" and "LEED" have been referenced in publications over time:

Using Google's N-Gram viewer, which displays how phrases have occurred in books over a period of years, we can check out the terms "LEED" and "green building" above. It shows that the terms "LEED" and "green building" have followed roughly the same path since the year 2000. While the trend lines are roughly parallel, LEED actually is referenced more often.

And while some green building experts are concerned that other rating systems, such as Green Globes, could pose a threat to LEED, it's interesting to look at the search volume for the terms "LEED" versus other systems, such as Green Globes and ENERGY STAR over time (if you can't see the chart below, click here:

This graph which shows global search volume from 2004 through today, LEED is searched for more often than any other related term on a regular basis.

Search volume for "LEED" experienced a big spike with the arrival of LEED 2009, perhaps because LEED 2009 brought with it a complete overhaul of the professional credentialing process, thereby causing a lot of confusion, prompting people to scramble and search for answers on Google.

Forecasting ahead to December 2014, Google predicts search volume for LEED is 220% greater than the term with the next highest search volume, "energy star" and 300% more than the term "green building". Wow! It appears that LEED is more popular as a search term than green building itself!

How Did LEED Become Synonymous with Green Building?

USGBC has been so successful in marketing LEED as a term that is synonymous with green building because, up until LEED, we did not have a good enough system for what defines a green building at all.

Like the launch of the USDA "Food Pyramid" in 1992, USGBC's 2000 launch of LEED provided structure for an incredibly complex concept, making sense of something that is difficult for many to grasp. Or, perhaps it's the unique combination of building certifications for properties of all types, and the sought-after professional credentialing system for LEED Green Associate and LEED AP?

USGBC has been far better at building trust than any other green building organization, which has had a compounding effect roughly equivalent to so many deposits in an increasingly empty and skeptical public's emotional bank account.

Indeed, LEED and Green Globes were launched at roughly the same time (early 2000s), but Green Globes has often been met with skepticism because of the system's opacity regarding specific ties to powerful chemical, plastics and timber industry lobbying groups who are critical of LEED. Also, as I wrote about earlier, Green Globes has been less than transparent in providing details about how the rating system actually works. Organizations such as BuildingGreen, a trusted information source in the green building industry, seemingly can't get its calls returned from the GBI, the non-profit that oversees Green Globes in the U.S.