Green Building

The City of Lake Elsinore recognizes the need to embrace the concepts of sustainable development and green building in order to increase environmental quality for future generations. As an example of its commitment to supporting healthy built and natural environments in the City of Lake Elsinore has successfully partnered with the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District to promote water conservation and water-efficient landscaping in development activities, including new construction and rehabilitation.

Additionally, the East Lake Specific Plan encourages but does not require, individual developers to consider the merits of certification through an established green building (sustainability) certification system, not only as a means to conserve energy but also to promote stewardship of the environment and green business practices. The following is a brief description of three of these established systems:

Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED)

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is an internationally recognized green building certification system developed by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. The United States Green Building Council LEED system of environmental standards is currently the most recognized system of rating projects and construction. More information regarding this program can be found on the USGBC.org - LEED page.

Green Globes® Certification

Green Globes® is a science-based building rating system that supports a wide range of new construction and existing building project types. Designed to allow building owners and managers to select which sustainability features best fit their building and occupants, Green Globes recognizes projects that meet at least 35% of the 1,000 available points. Environmental assessment areas that earn points are energy, indoor environment, site, water, resources, emissions, and project/environmental management. The Green Globes program is administered in the United States by Green Building Initiative™, a nonprofit organization and American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Standards Development Organization founded in 2004. The organization is the sole U.S. provider of the Green Globes® and federal Guiding Principles Compliance green building certification programs. Green Building Initiative states that the benefits of Green Globes Certification help reduce operating costs, qualify for tax incentives, meet government regulations, attract and retain employees and increase property's marketability. More information regarding this program can be found on TheGBI.org - Why Green Globes? page.

The Living Building Challenge™

The Living Building Challenge™ is an international sustainable building certification program created in 2006 by the non-profit International Living Future Institute. The Living Building Challenge™ is a building certification program advocacy tool and philosophy that defines the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today and acts to rapidly diminish the gap between current limits and end-game positive solutions.

The Challenge is comprised of seven performance categories called Petals: Place (Site), Water, Energy, Health and Happiness, Materials, Equity, and Beauty. Petals are subdivided into a total of twenty Imperatives, each of which focuses on a specific sphere of influence. This compilation of Imperatives can be applied to almost every conceivable building project, of any scale and any location-be it is a new building or an existing structure. It is considered to be more rigorous than green certification programs such as LEED. More information regarding this program can be found on LivingFuture.org.