With its promise of "real green buildings for life", The RGB Group builds environmentally friendly homes of the future today. The RGB Group's most recently completed residential project – a series of executive townhomes in Ottawa, the nation's capital, is the first LEED for Homes Platinum Residential Development in Ontario.
LEED standards guide all developments initiated by The RGB Group. Started in the early 90s by a team of volunteers, LEED has grown into an internationally recognized green building certification program with support of environmental activists and celebrities including Brad Pitt and Oprah Winfrey. LEED's third-party verification proves that a building or community incorporates strategies aimed at improving performance, increasing energy and water efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, thoughtfully utilizing natural resources, and improving indoor environmental quality.
With Canadians spending more than 90 percent of their time indoors according to Health Canada, LEED-certified buildings are also often credited with increased respiratory and other health benefits - particularly for children and the elderly. LEED homeowners also take pride in lifetime investments that are built with socially responsible building techniques and technologies.
LEED encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.
“What LEED means most to me is that we’re building for the next century,” says The RGB Group’s CEO Rolf Baumann. “The quality and efficiency of LEED-certified structures ensures they’ll be around as long as people need them.”
LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health:
- Sustainable Site Development
- Water Efficiency
- Energy Efficiency Materials Selection
- Indoor Environmental Quality
LEED credits and prerequisites are organized into these five categories. An additional category, Innovation and Design Process, addresses sustainable building expertise as well as design measures not covered under the other five environ- mental categories.
LEED Canada for Homes also includes a Location and Linkages category and an Awareness and Education category. LEED certification is based on the total point score achieved, following an independent review and an audit of selected credits.
With four possible levels of certification (Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum), LEED is flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of green building strategies that best fit the constraints and goals of particular projects.
