Green Building / LEED Headline
Building Better Places to Work
Since its inception, the Research Triangle Park has recognized the long-term value of our environmental assets and their importance in sustaining the region's quality of life. Sustainable development requires a holistic approach, and RTP has shown support for the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED® Rating System as a comprehensive solution for building green. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is an internationally recognized green building certification system, providing third-party verification that a building was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. These extra efforts are needed to make the building a good investment in the long-term.
The EPA’s National Computer Center opened in 2002 and became the first LEED building in RTP, and a growing number of buildings in the Park are LEED certified.
In September 2010, IBM’s new, 60,000 square foot Leadership Data Center in RTP became the company’s first LEED Gold certified data center. IBM renovated an existing building on its 4 million square foot RTP campus by reusing 95% of the original building's shell, recycling 90% of the materials from the original building and ensuring that 25% of newly purchased material came from recycled products. Among many key energy efficient features of the building, one of the most interesting is that the data center uses 50% less energy to operate compared to similarly sized centers by taking advantage of cooler outside temperatures and avoiding the use of high energy chillers.
And most recently, RTI International held the grand opening of their new building, which was designed and constructed to meet LEED standards. RTI estimates that the building will reduce energy costs by 25 percent over a typical building by using programmable HVAC systems as well as LED exterior and task lighting.
Moving forward, buildings in RTP will continue to be designed to meet LEED standards. On April 28, 2011, Biogen Idec held a groundbreaking event for their new building Bio26, intended to meet LEED Silver standards. Plans for this building include tactics for daylight harvesting, a variable refrigerant flow HVAC, rainwater collection and reuse systems, and many other sustainable design features.
In addition to LEED, the Energy Star and Labs21 programs by the EPA also recognize buildings for achieving high levels of energy efficiency. Several facilities at RTP companies have been recognized for their performance under those standards.
The current list of LEED certified building in RTP includes Credit Suisse RTP Center of Excellence, EPA Nation Computer Center, EPA’s First Environments Learning Center, IBM Leadership Data Center, Research Triangle Park Headquarters, RTI International 08 Building, and the Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Regulatory Science Lab.