Building and Environment, 46, 1081-1086 (2010)

When researching cost premiums for LEED certified buildings, Tatari and Kucukvar looked at buildings in terms of the various ratings and categories. The LEED rating system consists of four different ratings, Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum. The cost premiums range from 1-8% depending on the rating. In general there is a premium of 0.66% for Certified buildings, 2.11% for Silver, 4.41% for Gold, and 6.5% for Platinum. The cost increases with a higher rating because higher performance sustainable building projects tend to require larger investments.

The LEED system is also broken up into eight different categories: sustainable sites (SS), water efficiency (WE), energy and atmosphere (EA), materials and resources (MR), indoor environmental quality (IEQ), innovation and design (ID), regional priority (RP), and building grade (BG). SS, EA, and BG demonstrated the most sensitivity and significance within these categories; therefore they have a higher influence on the cost of a LEED building.