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SUSTAINABLE SITES (SS)

OVERVIEW

The Sustainable Sites (SS) category rewards decisions that promote sustainable relationships between buildings and their surrounding environments. It addresses critical environmental concerns, such as identifying opportunities to mitigate harm from rising temperatures and reducing the consequences of development on wildlife and people.

As the building industry increasingly calls for investments in resilience and biodiversity, the SS category responds with a streamlined focus on existing building projects to optimize their connections to the surrounding landscape, preserving healthy ecosystems and improving human well-being and ecological balance. The strategies to accomplish this critical work include heat mitigation, light pollution reduction, and bird collision abatement.

Decarbonization Some urban areas are covered in up to 50–90% dark, non-reflective surfaces that absorb and retain heat, creating “heat islands” that are significantly warmer than surrounding areas. [34] These heat islands can drive energy consumption to maintain comfortable temperatures within buildings, increasing their carbon emissions.

To reduce the building’s contribution to these effects, the SS category tackles local temperature increases through shading, increased tree canopy cover and vegetation, and reflective or green roofs ( SSc1: Heat Island Reduction ). Green roofs, for instance, can be up to 30–40°F cooler than typical roofs and reduce building air conditioning costs by up to 75%. [35] Decreasing the building’s reliance on energy-intensive systems to maintain indoor temperatures improves resilience and mitigates urban heat for the larger community.

Quality of life While the human health and well-being benefits from access to urban green space are well- documented, research continues to correlate these benefits with increased biodiversity. [36] [37] The

34 Lennart Olsson, Humberto Barbosa, Suruchi Bhadwal, Annette Cowie, Kenel Delusca, Dulce Flores-Renteria, Kathleen Hermans et al., “Land Degradation,” in Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems, by Aliyu Salisu Barau, ed. José Manuel Moreno and Carolina Vera (2019): 345–405, www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/4/2022/11/SRCCL_Chapter_4.pdf. 35 Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), “Fact Sheet | Nature as Resilient Infrastructure – an Overview of Nature-Based Solutions | White Papers | EESI,” n.d., www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-nature-as-resilient-infrastructure-an-overview-of-naturebased-solutions. 36 Matthew P. White, Lewis R. Elliott, James Grellier, Theo Economou, Simon Bell, Gregory N. Bratman, Marta Cirach, et al., “Associations Between Green/Blue Spaces and Mental Health Across 18 Countries,” Scientific Reports 11, no. 1 (2021a), doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87675-0. 37 Chen Gong, Rongtian Yang, Shuhua Li, “The Role of Urban Green Space in Promoting Health and Well-being is Related to Nature Connectedness and Biodiversity: Evidence from a Two-factor Mixed-design Experiment,”

U.S. Green Building Council LEED v5 Reference Guide for Operations and Maintenance, April 2025 Launch Edition 75