New LEED Standard for Wood Fails

The Forest Certification Benchmark, which would have established a standard against which all forest certification systems would be evaluated to determine whether they can earn points in the LEED green building certification system, has failed. The proposed standard was put up for a vote by the U.S. Green Building Council membership in November and did not pass; the status quo, in which only Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood can earn LEED points, will remain in place. The proposed standard faced opposition from a spectrum of organizations, from the FSC to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, whose certification scheme currently cannot earn LEED points.