This August, the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren Hall, which houses the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, earned a Platinum certification under the US Green Building Council’s LEED for Existing Buildings (EB) rating system. Upon its original construction in 2002, Bren Hall had achieved LEED Platinum based on its design and the sustainable attributes of the building components themselves. The most recent award earned the high-performance structure the distinction of being the first anywhere to have achieved Platinum (the highest rating offered by the USGBC) under both LEED for New Construction and LEED-EB. The certification is a welcome confirmation that the laboratory facility’s original design goals of optimizing energy and water efficiency are being realized, and is likely the first of many similar cases in the green building movement.

Bren Hall was also the first among UC Santa Barbara’s LEED-EB ‘portfolio’ buildings to be certified. The Portfolio Program utilizes a volume certification approach, whereby a University or business park can earn LEED credits based on campus-wide sustainable practices, and apply these credits to each building in its portfolio (25 buildings in Santa Barbara’s case). UC Santa Barbara’s Physical Facilities division has implemented a series of campuswide policies which pertain to such practices as grounds maintenance and landscaping, green cleaning, environmentally preferable purchasing, alternative transportation and retro-commissioning. In successfully documenting building-specific as well as campus-wide credits, Bren Hall’s LEED-EB certification emphasizes the high-performance aspects of the building itself while acknowledging the environmentally sensitive practices which have become a part of routine operations at the University.

Bringing sustainability through each building’s lifecycle – from design and construction to operations and maintenance – has been an area of increasing focus for UC Santa Barbara. With fewer new facilities planned for construction in the short-to-mid term, greater emphasis has been placed on upgrading existing facilities as a means to lower the campus’ environmental impact. As one of its indicators in this endeavor, the University has made a commitment to certifying ‘25 by 2012’ under LEED-EB, and based on the results of the pilot plans to expand the program to a greater number of campus buildings in the future.

For more information, contact UCSB Physical Facilities at (805) 893-2661 (ext. 1102), or email jordan.sager@pf.ucsb.edu.

About the Author
Jordan Sager earned his masters degree from UCSB’s Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, specializing in energy and climate studies with an emphasis in institutional sustainability.  He now works for the Physical Facilities division at UCSB where he manages the LEED Green Building program and assists in the development of campus energy efficiency projects.  Jordan is also a co-founder of Santa Barbara’s Emerging Green Builders organization and maintains a Regional Chair position in the California Central Coast Chapter of the US Green Building Council.