Articles by Daniel Overbey

For most of LEED's history, systematic field testing of air leakage was optional – something advanced teams did voluntarily, not something the rating system demanded.

By hitching their wagon to the horse of Standard 90.1, LEED-related hard costs are rising and becoming increasingly misaligned with low-margin project cost models based largely on minimum energy standards within the project’s regulatory context.

Energy efficiency benchmarking alone is no longer sufficient and we recommend evolving the American Institute of Architects' (AIA) primary climate action program to track total carbon intensity by incorporating fuel source reporting, electrification metrics, expanded embodied carbon tracking, and updated baselines.

Baselines and benchmarks are both valuable. A project's performance narrative should use both deliberately. The baseline grounds the conversation in the specifics of the project. The benchmark situates the project in the larger context.

The recently published Metropolis + Interface U.S. Sustainable Design Report 2026 provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the U.S. building design and construction industry. The report primarily focuses on decarbonization, material transparency, and circularity.

Only time will tell if nascent technologies can close the gap on these challenges to realize economically viable solutions that will usher a breakthrough in the market and catalyze efforts to decarbonize the building sector.

The latest version of the LEED rating system, LEED v5, is open for business. Registration is open, the Credit Library the Reference Guides are published, and a new version of Arc has replaced the old LEED Online platform.

While collecting "disclosure" documents proved easy enough for project teams, it turned out that LEED v4 was a bit ahead of the curve on the "optimization" side. Frankly, the industry lacked a common framework to facilitate rigorous, standardized, and streamlined workflows to achieve optimization. Simply put, the industry was not quite ready. It is ready now.

The 2025 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo convened at the Los Angeles Convention Center from November 4-7. Five major themes emerged that encapsulate the current discourse in "green building" and where the AEC is heading with regard to sustainability.