Last week it went unnoticed in the Mainstream Media, but it was verybig green news. The U.S. Green Building Council announced that startingnext year it will abandon certifying green buildings to the Leadershipin Energy and Environmental Design {LEED} standards.

Instead, it appears that it will make its sister certificationagency into an accreditation body to license certifiers. That`s goodnews because it means the backlog of applications for certificationshas some chance of getting cleared up.

USGBC gets great credit for making the LEED standards by far andaway the most widely used U.S. green-building ratings. But success hasgenerated a backlog of applications for certification, raisingquestions about a possible gap between hope and reality. After fouryears of the LEED program in New York City at the end of 2007, therewere 15 LEED certifications, or one for every 20 of the 294registrations in the pipeline. So developers are putting up billboardssaying they are "pursuing" a particular level of LEED.
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