LEED in Illinois Still Going Strong

Earlier this year Illinois surpassed a few big milestones with more than 700 LEED certified buildings totaling more than 150 million square feet (not counting LEED for Homes or LEED for Neighborhood Development). Given this exciting news, we thought it would be worth revisiting the fantastic Regional Green Building Case Study Project: A Post‐Occupancy Study of LEED Projects in Illinois, led by USGBC’s Chicago Chapter and the Center for Neighborhood Technology. The study, published in 2009, looked at both the financial and post-occupancy performance of 25 LEED certified buildings in Illinois.

While post-occupancy evaluations are common for green building projects, the authors of this report note that their study is unique for both its collaborative approach and the scope of metrics evaluated. Participating buildings provided at least 12 consecutive months of post-occupancy energy use data and represented LEED projects certified at all levels and across multiple LEED rating programs, including New Construction, Existing Buildings, Commercial Interiors, and Core & Shell. You can see the full results here, including the appendix profiling each of the 25 case studies.