If there’s a single idea – a catalyst – in transforming North America’s built environment, it is LEED: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Created in the mid-1990s by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED® remains the most widely-adopted green building standard in the world.

LEED represents excellence in green building design, construction, renovation, and operations and maintenance. It provides third-party verification that a building or a community uses strategies aimed at improving performance across key sustainability metrics, including energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. This continuously-evolving standard provides a concise framework to measure sustainability in virtually all building, community, and home project types.

LEED Version 4 launched in November 2013, increasing the threshold in energy, water, and indoor environmental quality and driving the goals of green buildings farther than ever.

Learn more about LEEDv4.

LEED in Missouri & Southern Illinois

By any measure, Missouri Gateway is a leader in LEED. Thanks to a commitment by the City of St. Louis (City Ordinance 67414), the City of Clayton, Washington University and other local institutional and corporate leaders, there are now almost 1,000 LEED Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Certified projects across the Chapter’s territory. Learn more about these projects in our LEED Project Profiles.