LEED Green Associate 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is 'daylighting' and why is it valued in LEED's Indoor Environmental Quality category?
- Installing daylight-spectrum LED bulbs to mimic sunlight
- Connecting occupants to the outdoors with natural light to improve wellbeing and reduce lighting energy (Correct answer)
- Ensuring 24-hour lighting in all occupied spaces
- Painting walls white to reflect artificial light more efficiently
Correct answer: Connecting occupants to the outdoors with natural light to improve wellbeing and reduce lighting energy
Daylighting uses natural sunlight to illuminate interior spaces, improving occupant health and comfort while reducing electric lighting energy use.
Question 2: A developer builds on a previously developed urban infill site. Which LEED benefit does this primarily support?
- Heat island reduction
- Preservation of greenfield land and reduction of sprawl (Correct answer)
- Improved stormwater management
- Enhanced biodiversity on the site
Correct answer: Preservation of greenfield land and reduction of sprawl
Building on infill sites preserves undeveloped land, reduces infrastructure expansion, and supports compact, walkable community development.
Question 3: Which refrigerant management strategy is encouraged under LEED's Energy and Atmosphere category?
- Using refrigerants with high ozone depletion potential for efficiency
- Selecting refrigerants with low global warming potential and zero ozone depletion potential (Correct answer)
- Eliminating all mechanical cooling from the building
- Using only natural gas-powered cooling systems
Correct answer: Selecting refrigerants with low global warming potential and zero ozone depletion potential
LEED encourages refrigerants that minimize both ozone depletion potential (ODP) and global warming potential (GWP).
Question 4: What is the role of a 'LEED Coordinator' on a project team?
- To perform energy modeling for the project
- To manage documentation, credit tracking, and communication with GBCI throughout certification (Correct answer)
- To conduct the final commissioning inspections
- To approve the selection of all building materials
Correct answer: To manage documentation, credit tracking, and communication with GBCI throughout certification
The LEED Coordinator ensures all credit documentation is collected, organized, and submitted correctly, serving as the main point of contact for the certification process.
Question 5: Which LEED credit directly addresses occupant control over their thermal comfort?
- Thermal Comfort (Correct answer)
- Interior Lighting
- Individual Occupant Control
- Acoustic Performance
Correct answer: Thermal Comfort
The Thermal Comfort credit requires both designing for thermal comfort standards and, in some versions, providing occupants with individual control over their environment.
Question 6: What distinguishes 'regionally extracted and manufactured' materials in LEED's Materials and Resources category?
- They must contain at least 50% post-consumer recycled content
- They are sourced and processed within 100 miles of the project site (Correct answer)
- They must be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council
- They are harvested from within the same climate zone as the project
Correct answer: They are sourced and processed within 100 miles of the project site
LEED defines regional materials as those extracted, harvested, recovered, and manufactured within 100 miles of the project, reducing transportation impacts.
Question 7: In LEED, what is the significance of the 'baseline' building model in energy performance calculations?
- It represents the ideal high-performance design the project should achieve
- It is a code-minimum reference building used to measure the percentage improvement of the proposed design (Correct answer)
- It is a historical average of similar buildings used for benchmarking
- It represents the highest energy-consuming version of the building
Correct answer: It is a code-minimum reference building used to measure the percentage improvement of the proposed design
The baseline building, modeled per ASHRAE 90.1, represents minimum code compliance and is used to calculate the percentage energy cost savings of the proposed design.
LEED Green Associate 5
What is 'daylighting' and why is it valued in LEED's Indoor Environmental Quality category?