Is LEED certification worth the investment for a mid-career professional in 2025?

I'm ten years into a career as a licensed architect and I've never pursued leed certification, partly because most of my work has been residential and partly because the continuing education requirements felt like a time sink. Now I'm moving into a firm that does primarily commercial and institutional work, and the credential keeps coming up in project pursuits.

The direct costs are real: exam fees, study materials, and the two-year CE requirement to maintain an active LEED AP credential. But the market signals are also real — green building certification requirements are showing up in more government and institutional procurement specs, and some public project RFPs now specifically require at least one LEED AP on the project team.

If you want to evaluate ROI before committing, the LEED practice test materials give you a clear picture of the study investment required. For architects in commercial practice, has the credential materially changed your project opportunities or billing rate?