Since 1993, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has worked with the building industry and its many professionals to transform the sector through improved standards with tangible results.
Five years after its founding, the organization established its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system to promote practices and certify projects that improve the health and wellbeing of building occupants as well as the economic, operational, and environmental performance of the buildings themselves. Now in its fifth iteration, LEED v5 was launched in April 2025 and features changes to the rating system for Building Design and Construction (BD+C), Interior Design and Construction (ID+C), and Operations and Maintenance (O+M) which more closely align with environmental goals and business priorities.
Further, LEED v5 embeds resilience into the decision-making process through credits such as the Climate Resilience Assessment Prerequisite, which is required for all projects and helps teams identify and evaluate climate and natural-hazard risks early in the planning process, driving long-term value for the building owners, occupants, and the greater community.
The changes have shifted how credit points are weighted. The points are now aligned around three impact areas: decarbonization, quality of life, and ecological conservation and restoration, with resilience and equity integrated within the quality of life area and woven throughout the rating system. These are the areas in which the organization feels the building industry needs to lead to accelerate the positive impacts therein.
Building intentionally
Each version of LEED has incrementally leveled up the degree of thoughtfulness and intention behind a building’s design and function and that is also true of v5, which addresses the changing circumstances building owners face as the urgency of climate change grows. The goal is to ensure that buildings perform under normal conditions, as well as the extraordinary ones.
“We know that buildings need to do more to perform well under normal conditions, but they also need to be prepared for future climate risks, for acute and chronic stressors, to support occupant health and safety and contribute to stronger communities,” Associate Director, LEED Technical Development, Karema Enos, explains. “We’re asking teams to really think more intentionally about the risks [to] their building, the acute and chronic risks that they may face over time, including hazards like extreme heat, like flooding, like wildfire and storms, all these things that we’ve been seeing more and more of.”
LEED v5 requires project teams to assess observed conditions as well as projected future climate and natural-hazard data, offering a more holistic approach to building performance over the life of an asset. The framework also goes beyond risk identification to consider how those challenges may affect long-term performance and resilience. But the implications of that approach extend beyond the building itself.
“Buildings are a part of a larger social and ecological system and when they’re designed and operated well, they can reduce harm, support recovery, and contribute to community wellbeing,” notes Enos. “It’s about protecting people and operations and investments and communities.”
More operations, specifically the physical building assets, need to be prepared for the new reality. Texas is a great example of a region where unique climate challenges and vulnerability to extreme weather can have a devastating effect on public health, infrastructure, and economic strength. The state is subject to extreme heat and drought conditions which place undue pressure on the energy grid and pose challenges to the agricultural productivity of the state. These unique conditions also contribute to the growing risk of wildfires and can strain emergency-response resources.
And while Central and West Texas deal with immense heat and drought, Texas’ Gulf Coast is exposed to hurricanes, storm surge, and coastal flooding, as climate change produces storms that stall, intensify, and carry greater volumes of moisture. Intense storms can also result in significant inland flooding. Paired with accelerated sea-level rise, the storm surges become ever more damaging, particularly where there is energy infrastructure. To make matters worse, lands that are prone to extended periods of drought have less absorptive qualities and thus can experience flash flooding and conditions of soil erosion that can lead to billions of dollars in damages and lives lost.
“Earlier approaches to building performance often focus on reducing environmental impact under expected conditions, and that remains important, but today, it also needs to ask how buildings perform during stress, during disruptions, during loss of electricity, or during changing climate conditions,” explains Enos.
Investing early
As climate risks continue to grow in number and severity, resilience becomes a core driver of asset performance and operational continuity, which is why USGBC has integrated it earlier in the decision-making process to better mitigate risks that pose a threat to productivity, profitability, and ecological wellbeing, both inside the built environment and beyond.
On the subject of business continuity, Deisy Verdinez, Public Relations & Communications Director, explains, “If you don’t invest in the beginning, then a flood, a hurricane, a storm, or whatever comes through and knocks your power out even for just a couple of days, that’s lost revenue. That’s not nearly as important as human lives, but it matters to a community whether a business can still continue to operate after some sort of weather event.”
Research on post-disaster business recovery demonstrates the importance of risk mitigation and proper preparation. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimates that 40 percent of businesses will not reopen following a disaster, with 25 percent of those that do reopen failing within the first year, which demonstrates the importance of risk mitigation and proper preparation. While many concerns exist over the “first costs” associated with implementing these kinds of standards, when it comes to resilience, the value is demonstrable throughout the building’s lifecycle and performance.
“What you find is that over time, it saves you a lot more money putting these [resilience strategies] in place. It’s far more expensive to replace a building than it is to protect it,” notes Enos.
Resilience as a requirement
Indeed, resilience is not a “nice to have,” but a “must have,” serving as an essential component and core principle of sustainable building practice that LEED v5 seeks to advance.
LEED v5 helps project teams move from awareness to action through the Climate Resilience Assessment prerequisite, which requires teams to identify risks early and use those findings to inform decisions that may be rewarded in later credits within the rating system, improve overall building performance, and reduce the impacts of hazard risks. “We’re helping the industry deliver buildings with lower carbon [emissions], that are healthier, that are more equitable, that are more ecologically responsible, that are more resilient—and that has a domino effect on the industry,” says Enos.
As the LEED v5 rating system is implemented by more project teams, USGBC can begin to learn from early adopters and collect more performance data to inform future versions of LEED. “Those experiences will help demonstrate what resilience looks like across different project teams, in different regions and communities, so we look to learn more and see how things shape up for v6,” notes Enos.
A test of time
As projects pursue LEED v5 certification, the market can expect a new standard for building operation, function, and aesthetics to emerge, while reaping the countless advantages of truly sustainable (and resilient) design.
For Enos, “What LEED v5 does is help make those strategies more consistent, measurable, and scalable. It’s intended to be rigorous, but it’s also flexible enough to recognize that strategies look different depending on your geography, your building type, your site conditions, and your community’s needs. That is the entire purpose of having a ‘Certified’ to ‘Platinum’ scale.”
As implementation takes place, USGBC will continue to offer education, tools, and support to project teams to encourage and promote its adoption, raising the bar for projects and accelerating market transformation in the process.
And, as the market navigates this change, USGBC will continue to identify new ways to advance the standards that push the industry and the performance of the built environment forward for the wellbeing of all.
