International Interest Grows in Green-Building Certification AUSTIN, TEXAS - Last month, the new U.S. Embassy compound in Madagascar, which includes high-efficiency windows and low-flow toilets, received certification as a green building. Taipei 101, one of the world's tallest skyscrapers, also earned a green stamp of approval recently, as did the Seoul Finance Center in South Korea. As companies and governments look to burnish their environmental credentials around the world, many are devoting extra time and money to certifying their buildings as green. The buildings in Madagascar, Taipei and Seoul are among those that have turned to a U.S.-based process called LEED, short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which offers third-party verification. Other green-building standards, like the British-based BREEAM and DGNB in Germany, are also spreading outside their home countries. Green-building certification is "becoming accepted as a badge of genuine quality," said Raphael Sperry, a senior consultant with Simon & Associates Green Building Consultants in San Francisco, who is LEED-accredited in his profession. International tenants in particular, he noted, may seek out buildings with recognized green stamps, which should mean low bills for energy and water and a pleasant working environment. Scot Horst, the senior vice president for LEED at the U.S. Green Building Council, the Washington-based group that administers the certification program, cited a "dramatic uptick" in international interest. Over the past two years, Mr. Horst said, about 40 percent of the square footage of projects registered with LEED - meaning they are not necessarily certified yet but are working toward that goal - have come from outside the United States. About 5,700 projects outside the United States have registered for LEED. Of these, the largest number (including both certifications and registrations) are in China, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico and Germany. "If you're a global law firm with offices in multiple cities, it's hard to justify why staff in one office get space in a LEED building but other offices don't," Mr. Sperry said. A number of European countries have their own green-building certification systems, as do Japan and Singapore. Japan's system, called CASBEE, has a "strong emphasis on earthquake resistance," according to Peter Braithwaite, who works for the sustainability group at CH2M Hill, an international project delivery firm. Some of the European standards are beginning, like LEED, to spread to Asia. BREEAM, a certification process developed in Britain in 1990, now spans more than 50 countries and will soon be announcing its first certification in China, according to Simon Guy, the head of marketing for BRE, which oversees BREEAM (short for BRE Environmental Assessment Method). DGNB, the German certification system, was created in 2007 and is working on its first projects in China and Russia, according to Martin Prösler, a DGNB spokesman. Multinational companies have been a driving force behind LEED, Mr. Horst said. Those companies have planted LEED buildings "like seeds" in different countries, he said, and interest has grown from there. For example, four years ago, multinationals were responsible for all LEED projects in China. Today, Mr. Horst said, almost half of the LEED-registered projects in the country belong to Chinese companies. "In Asia, LEED is considered the gold standard for sustainable certification," said David Groseclose, an architect and senior LEED consultant with CH2M Hill. But LEED has encountered challenges as it has spread. Among them is language. Green-building certification requires participation of many groups, including architects and engineers, and "it's a lot of extra work if they don't speak English," Mr. Horst said. LEED has recently translated its materials into Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese. It is also working on simple changes, like allowing paperwork submissions in metric units rather than imperial units. More challenging, critics say, is the matter of accounting for local conditions, like climate, culture and the availability of materials. "It's too broad a paintbrush," said Peter Pfeiffer, a principal with the architectural firm Barley & Pfeiffer in Austin, Texas, speaking about the international spread of standards like LEED. Mr. Pfeiffer is a proponent of more localized standards, having helped start a green-building certification program in Austin more than 20 years ago. LEED officials say the next version of their standard, which is open for public comment this month, should be easier to apply internationally. For example, Mr. Horst said, LEED's goal is to offer a standard system of credits for arid climates, so that a green building in Phoenix, Arizona, will have the same requirements as one in Riyadh. Part of the idea is for LEED to be a uniform international brand - so that tenants can be confident that a LEED-certified building in New York will have many characteristics similar to one in Beijing.