The US Green Building Council (USGBC) announced last week it is postponing plans to ballot the next version of LEED until as late as June 2013. The reorganization and weighting of the credit structure of the proposed LEED 2012 rating system are the most extensive in LEED’s 12-year history. Because of this, there has been growing concern from building industry professionals that the proposed changes to the rating system were: 1) too dramatic in a weak real estate market; 2) needed refinement to the new approaches to the Material & Resources category; and 3) required tools that would not be widely available by the time the new systems was slated to launch in November 2012.

The strong push for transparency and avoidance of chemicals of concern has produced unprecedented assaults from the chemical industry which joined forces with the mainstream forest products industry in seeking to limit the federal government’s use of the rating system. No longer tied to a particular year, the USGBC is also revising its naming system, so the new version will be called "LEED v4" instead of "LEED 2012."