A welcome mat in a parking garage. Lights that aren’t working. Pipes hanging exposed from a ceiling.

At first glance, the University’s building renovations appear incomplete. But a welcome mat reduces the number of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a building, and by revealing pipes, builders save money on ceiling materials while sending less waste to the landfill.

These details are the difference between meeting the silver or gold standard in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). With four buildings already certified, the UW is using LEED as a guide to going green.

As of January 2005, Washington State passed an executive order mandating that all state agencies, including the UW, adopt green building policies. In fact, every state building project that is more than 25,000 square feet must meet the LEED “Silver standard.”

LEED was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a non-profit organization devoted to sustainable building construction and design. In an effort to promote its “triple bottom line” — environmental, social and economic prosperity — the USGBC created a rating system to determine how green a building really is.

Three projects on the UW campus have already been LEED certified. They include the Nordheim Court Apartments, Merrill Hall and Benjamin Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building. Several other buildings are in the design or construction phase, pending certification.

“The key to the LEED process is determining how much energy a building is using,” said Clara Simon, capital projects sustainability manager. “The energy used by buildings makes up 40 percent of the world’s capital.”

Unlike most building systems, which measure energy output per square foot, LEED requires a metering system that measures electricity, water and other energy sources separately. The UW’s Information School has composed a live online feed to record data from such meters.

LEED buildings strive to build harmony between nature and society by bringing the environment indoors. This includes fresh air and natural lighting, referred to as “daylighting.”

“I sat through a lot of lectures with no windows,” said Simon. “When class was over, you wanted out of there. But when people can sense what time it is, it influences their circadian rhythms, which in turn makes them less depressed and more productive.”

According to Simon, 95 percent of people have a view of the outside in LEED-certified buildings.

In a study led by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, researchers found that students performed better on math and reading tests when they had access to daylighting. In Seattle, students in classrooms with the most daylighting were found to have seven to 18 percent higher scores than those in rooms with the least.

However, although there appear to be clear benefits for the University, some question the LEED slogan: Build green. Everyone profits.

Harbor Properties Senior Project Manager Martha Barkman is very familiar with LEED. She oversaw the development of Alcyone Apartments, the first LEED-certified apartment building in the Seattle area.

“Part of the LEED process says you must absolutely document everything and send your paper trail to the USGBC,” she said. For instance, developers must not only recycle waste during construction, they must document where they recycled and how their waste was used.

“You end up spending up to $50,000 to write up all this documentation and, in the end, to receive your certification, you must pay someone to test all your systems instead of trusting your subcontractors to do that,” Barkman added. “You pay a $15,000 fee to be LEED certified as well. So by the time it’s all done, you’ve spent at least $100,000.”

In other words, in order to get a plaque in the mail, builders are paying thousands more than they otherwise would.

Harbor Properties builds to LEED standards without getting the certification. Although this decreases accountability by a third party, Barkman feels this is a way to help save the environment while also saving money.

LEED has several products to accommodate different living and work spaces. Harbor Properties built a Core and Shell product, much like Benjamin Hall on the UW campus. This product calls for developers to construct the building’s shell and main operating systems, leaving the building’s insides empty for tenants to design themselves.

“We had tenants that said, ‘We want to spend our money on malaria cures, not LEED,’” Barkman said.

However, for Simon, LEED is about the long-term savings — not the upfront costs.

“It doesn’t have to cost more to do it, if it’s planned well,” she said. “The University was looking for a way to build a building that would be sustainable and cheap. We designed [Benjamin Hall] for it to last on the lowest dollar possible.”

The UW has found innovative ways to cut energy costs in LEED buildings. The UW department of architecture has an internship program for students at the Integrated Design Lab in Seattle. Funded by Seattle City Light and Puget Sound Energy, the lab is constantly looking for ways to harness renewable energy sources.

In Merrill Hall, solar panels produce enough energy to light the library’s top floor. In Benjamin Hall overhead lights have built-in sensors, so when there is adequate daylight coming into the room, the lights automatically turn off.

“When we save 10 percent energy, that’s about $3 a month,” said Barkman. “This is the cost of one latte, which doesn’t seem like a huge savings.”

However, Barkman acknowledged the differences between building small-scale residential and higher-education projects.

“When looking at the whole campus, the savings can be a lot more because you are looking at a big bill,” she said.

UW Earth Club co-president Michael Peralta supports LEED, as it creates a healthier living environment, he said, but he is unsure why it costs so much more than constructing a normal building.

Peralta believes there is a fine line between being environmentally conscious and overspending.

“By making it cost more, I don’t think other businesses will catch on,” he said. “It’s like organic food. I’d like to have organic bread, but it’s too expensive.”

All LEED buildings at UW will be metering their energy usage until 2016. Also, 10 months after receiving certification, LEED building systems are tested to determine whether the building is really saving as much energy as it was designed to save.

“I don’t know if LEED will last,” said Barkman. “But it has its head in the right place.”

Reach reporter Catherine Daley at features@dailyuw.com.