Incremental costs of sustainable development at various levels of sustainability accreditations

Real benefits and costs of sustainable development are not well understood in practice. In the early days of sustainability frameworks such as LEED, uncertainty regarding the system’s requirements and lack of knowledge resulted in substantial cost premiums for green certified buildings compared to conventional construction.

With the maturing of the green building industry products and technologies, green building premiums are much less now. However, it may be argued that sustainability goals of projects are driven by market requirements and competition rather than sound understanding of the real benefits and costs of sustainable development and passive design systems with zero cost or low cost solutions for the specific project/development. The cost of sustainability to move to a higher level rating is generally found difficult to judge and is considered quite high in practice. Developers/ owners who decide on the sustainability goals are generally concerned about the incremental cost between different levels of rating systems.

A research and formulation of the findings in a framework through analysis of real benefits and the incremental cost of various levels (certified-silver-gold-platinum) of LEED certification of a project will be an extremely beneficial guidance for the construction industry where participants still lack knowledge and awareness. The nature of the research requires that candidates should have awareness and good knowledge of sustainability, computer aided drawing/modelling technologies as well as research and analytic skills.