Shearing Layers Concept and Leed Green Buildings in Both Rating Schemes and Certified Projects

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for New Construction and Major Renovations v3 (NC) and LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance v3 (EB) schemes were studied to examine the application of the shearing layer concept to green buildings. The manners in which (i) rating systems in their current configurations and (ii) certified projects in their practical applications treated the long life-expectances in buildings and short life-expectancies in systems were questioned. To maximally reduce nondemonic intrusion, we studied only those states in the United States in which statistically viable numbers of projects had been completed in 2016. A two-way mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) model was used to evaluate the interaction between two types of buildings (i.e., NC vs EB) and two sets of sub-layers (i.e., Site, Structure, and Skin from the Building layer and Services, Space Plane, and Stuff from the Service layer). The discrepancy in the case of a new building and the similarity in the case of a renovated building between rating schemes and certified projects were revealed: (i) the NC rating scheme prefers to emphasize the Service layer (SL), whereas newly constructed projects prefer to emphasize the Building layer (BL) due to the high performance of the Site and Structure sub-layers; (ii) the EB rating scheme prefers to emphasize the Service layer, as do renovated building projects, due to the high performance of the Stuff sub-layer.