Earlier this week Harvard University was recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the greenest colleges in the nation. The university’s green building program was just one of the reasons the school received a spot on the 2012 Green Rating Honor Roll and the Ivy League university just reached a new green building milestone – 50 LEED certified projects.

 

On Monday, the U.S. Green Building Council and Harvard University announced that the college achieved its 50th LEED certification. The 50 LEED certified projects amount to more than 1.5 million square feet of usable space including labs, dorms, libraries and more. Six of the 50 projects achieved LEED Platinum certification, the highest level available under the USGBC’s LEED Rating System.

 

While Harvard University is celebrating this green building milestone, the school is not stopping there. An additional 3 million square feet of space at the university is tied up in LEED registered projects. Overall, more than 90 projects at Harvard are either LEED certified or LEED registered.

 

According to the USGBC release, “energy models suggest that the 14 LEED new construction projects have delivered more than $1.5 million in energy savings annually and a reduction of more than 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCDE) annually, which equates to an average reduction of 34 percent below industry energy standards.”

 

For more information about the university’s LEED certified buildings, read Katie Koch’s article in the Harvard Gazette.