LEED LCA credits Made Easy

What you need to do to earn the LEED v4 LCA credits

The process requires improving building life-cycle impacts by 10 % compared to a baseline building, using a Life-Cycle Assessment software. The baseline and proposed buildings must be of comparable size, function, orientation,and operating energy performance. The LCA must be calculated for six listed environmental impact categories with three of them, including Global warming potential, demonstrating at minimum a 10% reduction. No category of impacts may increase by more than 5% compared to the baseline design.

Working to achieve LEED-mandated performance improvement

In practice, it helps to think of the baseline building as a building meeting the same function and size, but without all of the clever design choices that make it more efficient. You’ll want to iterate over several design changes rapidly to see what they would mean for your project and compare changes to your baseline project seamlessly. To ensure everything goes smoothly, pick an easy to use LCA software. One Click LCA allows varying and comparing alternatives in minutes, and helps you develop your baseline design, too. With the additional power of using the LCA as a design tool, an easy to use building LCA software with good support makes this a very attractive credit for LEED projects.

Effortless Whole-Building LCA with One Click LCA

The LCA data used must comply with ISO 14044, which is ensured by LCA software that conforms to LEED v4’s requirements. One Click LCA complies with all LEED requirements and supports all required impact categories, and provides dedicated LEED-specific application to North American LEED users. The North American version is powered by datasets from U.S. and Canada, and uses TRACI 2.1. The application provides a fool-proof template that ensures you’ll always follow the LEED template to the letter.

There is a bonus, too. If you achieve any improvement over the required credit thresholds in all six impact categories, you are eligible for the exemplary performance credit. LCA is also a regional priority credit in Canada and many parts in the United States:

• Ohio, Texas, Louisiana, Virginia, West Virginia, Illinois, Delaware, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Option 1. Environmental Product Declaration (1 point)

• The requirement of the credit is to use at least 20 permanently installed building products from at least five different manufacturers that have an environmental product declaration (EPD). Type of the EPD defines it’s weight in calculations. Product-specific EPDs count for one EPD, whereas product-group average EPDs count for a half. Critically reviewed LCA counts for a quarter.
• One Click LCA software contains and constantly updates the following US EPD databases: NRMCA, ASTM, NSF, SCS Global Services, UL Environment, and Quartz.

Option 2. Multi-Attribute Optimization (1 point)

• The requirement is to show that at least 50 % (by cost) of permanently installed building products demonstrate LCA impact reduction in at least 3 impact categories compared to industry average. Alternatively, this may be shown by compliancy with other USGBC approved programs. This option weights the location of sourcing (products extracted, manufactured, purchased closer than 100 miles / 160 km counts as double) and caps structure and enclosure to not more than 30 % of value of compliant building products.

One Click LCA can power up to 10 credits + related regional priorities in LEED v4, and support a range of other voluntary analyses, from Life-Cycle Costing to in-life performance tracking.