LEED-NC platinum-certified industrial manufacturing space projects in Bangladesh and their environmental assessment

This study aimed to investigate the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for New Construction (LEED-NC) version 3 (v3) platinum-certified industrial manufacturing space projects in Bangladesh via a life-cycle assessment (LCA). A total of 27 LEED-NC v3 projects were sorted by the energy and atmosphere (EA) “optimize energy performance” credit (EAc1) achievement: 12 projects with the highest EAc1 achievement were collected in Group 1, and 12 projects with the lowest EAc1 achievement were collected in Group 2. Significance tests demonstrated that Group 1 and Group 2 differed based on different achievements in EA, as well as in their materials and resources (MR) credits: namely, EAc1, EAc2 “on-site renewable energy”, and MRc1.1 “building reuse–maintain existing walls, floors, and roof”. Regarding LCA, MRc1.1 was used in the production (P) stage, and EAc1 and EAc2 were used in the operational energy (OE) stage. The ReCiPe2016 endpoint results show that, in the P stage, the Group 2 strategy resulted in the least environmental damage (p = 0.0030), while in the OE stage, the Group 1 strategy resulted in the least environmental damage (p = 0.0130). However, the overall P + OE score showed the same environmental damage, as based on both certification strategies (p = 0.4699). The contribution and novelty of this study lie in its design, which makes it possible to compare at least two LEED certification strategies in the same country, and therefore to select the best alternative among the green building projects in a particular country.