ILFI Launches Living Building Challenge 4.0
and a Core Certification Program
On May 2, the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) launched its latest version of Living Building Challenge 4.0 (LBC 4.0) at the Living Future unConference, an event that brings together 1,300+ leaders focused on regenerative building and community design and construction and green products. Living Building Challenge (LBC) is the world’s most ambitious green building certification standard. The revised version highlights streamlined requirements to meet demand from the marketplace for increased scale and accessibility. Many corporations, organizations, and institutions have made their commitment to test the new standard in their construction, namely Google and King County of Washington State.
What’s New
The Living Building Challenge now has ten Core Imperatives that serve as the fundamental requirements for each Petal. All of the ten Core Imperatives are required for Petal Certification, which together constitute the requirements of the new Core Green Building Certification.
Living Future Institute’s revised certifications include the new Core standard. Source: ILFI – LBC 4.0 Standard.
Major Updates to LBC Imperatives
- Red List – now includes an updated list based on chemical classes, replacing previous version’s specific chemicals, and a reduced threshold for compliance for project teams from 100% to 90% of materials.
- Water – is now divided into two requirements, Core and Living, and requires comparison to a baseline. Project teams also have an option of “hand-printing”, a way of offsetting project’s footprint by contributing to positive changes elsewhere.
- Energy – is also divided into Core and Living requirements, and now incorporates an EUI minimum and embodied carbon.
- Responsible Sourcing – now has an FSC project certification pathway and has a modified calculation to determine the number of required Declare labels.
- Urban Agriculture – introduction of a secondary path to improve the accessibility to fresh food in conjunction with on-site food production, and a modification to food storage requirements.
- Inclusion – is a new imperative addressing diversity in hiring and access to training via the Just label.
- Education + Inspiration – now requires one Living Future Accredited (LFA) professional on each project team.
Core Green Building Certification
The Core Green Building Certification℠ (Core) is a simple framework that outlines the 10 best practice achievements that a building must obtain to be considered a green or sustainable building. It puts the connection to nature, equity and the need for a building to be loved on even footing with the typical water, energy and materials concerns. Core seeks to rapidly diminish the gap between the highest levels of established green building certification programs and the aspirations of the Living Building Challenge.
Volume Certification program for Zero Energy and Zero Carbon certification
The Institute has also rolled out the Volume program for Zero Energy and Zero Carbon certification for organizations to address energy and carbon efficiently and systematically. The new Volume program will cater to companies and organizations pursuing certification across their entire portfolios and campuses.
About the Living Building Challenge (LBC)
The Living Building Challenge is the world’s most ambitious performance standard for buildings. People from around the world use the LBC regenerative design framework to create spaces that, like a flower, give more than they take. For more information visit www.living-future.org/lbc.
BEE LBC Experience
BEE Incorporations are engineering consultants and materials specialists focusing on sustainability for the built environment. Via our offices in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, India, Mongolia, Australia, UK, France, and Italy we support projects all over the world to achieve their sustainability targets in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
We have over 300 projects in over 30 countries comprising over 35 million square feet of GFA. In 2018, we were the first to lead Cambodia’s first Living Community Challenge (LCC) project. BEE comprises of a team of staff of fully bilingual LBC specialists and Auditors with expertise in ILFI’s LBC, LCC, and Zero Energy Certification consulting services.
