The Benefits of Getting ILFI-Certified

Story at a glance:

• The International Living Future Institute administers four certification programs: the Living Building Challenge, Zero Carbon Certification, Zero Energy Certification, and the Living Product Challenge.
• The benefits of getting ILFI-certified at the building level include reduced operating costs, increased energy independence, and improved indoor environmental quality.
• Manufacturers whose products are ILFI-certified are more resilient to climate change, enjoy enhanced marketability, and are more likely to attract, retain, and engage talented employees.

Founded in 2009 by architects Jason F. McLennan and Bob Berkebile in collaboration with the Cascadia Green Building Council, the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) is an environmental NGO dedicated to creating a socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative society.

ILFI is built on the fundamental belief that reconciling humanity’s relationship with the natural world is crucial to reversing anthropogenic climate change and can only be achieved through the large-scale implementation of collaborative, regenerative design principles.

This philosophy lies at the heart of all of ILFI’s green design certification programs— often considered to be among the most comprehensive and rigorous building and product verification systems currently available. In this article we outline the many benefits of getting ILFI-certified.

ILFI Certification Programs

ILFI currently manages and administers four different certification programs: the Living Building Challenge, Zero Carbon Certification, Zero Energy Certification, and Living Product Challenge.

Living Building Challenge

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) is an extremely rigorous green building rating system that encourages the design and construction of regenerative buildings, or buildings that ultimately have a positive—rather than negative or neutral—impact on the environment. The system uses a flower-inspired framework encompassing seven distinct “petals” or key performance areas: place, water, energy, health and happiness, materials, equity, and beauty.

• Place. Necessitates the careful consideration of site and context before the design process even begins in order to better understand local factors and the impact construction will have on both the environment and community during its construction and operation.
• Water. Requires that buildings be designed to only use the amount of water that can be collected on-site and purified without the aid of chemicals; often manifests in the form of integrated rainwater harvesting systems, greywater recycling, compostable toilets, et cetera.
• Energy. Aims to reduce fossil fuel dependency and energy consumption by requiring that projects produce 105% of the energy they need year-round via renewable sources.
• Health and happiness. Places a high importance on remedying the source of health problems by improving indoor air quality, visual comfort, acoustic comfort, and thermal comfort, as well as fostering a stronger connection to the natural world (i.e. biophilic design).
• Materials. Focuses primarily on eliminating the use of building materials that are known to have a negative impact on human, environmental, and public health; requires all materials be free of Red List compounds and necessitates careful documentation of all materials/products used.
• Equity. Requires that a project does not disturb others’ access to clean water, sunlight, or fresh air and that it is accessible to all peoples, especially those belonging to vulnerable populations.
• Beauty. While not subjectively defined, this petal encourages architects to put genuine effort into designing beautiful buildings that inspire and elevate lives of not just the building’s occupants but also visitors, neighbors, and the community at large.

Each petal is then subdivided into imperatives, of which there are a total of 20 spread throughout the seven petals—10 of those imperatives are required while the remainder are considered supplementary. Different levels of LBC certification require compliance with varying numbers of imperatives.

Full LBC certification for new buildings necessitates that all 20 imperatives be met whereas Petal certification requires projects attain all imperatives within the Energy, Water, or Materials petals in addition to the core 10 imperatives; projects can also earn Core certification for meeting the core 10 imperatives.

Zero Carbon Certification

Developed in 2018, ILFI’s Zero Carbon Certification is a performance-based carbon standard that encourages and supports the adoption of rigorous decarbonization efforts within the built environment. The program aims to establish a scalable pathway towards a net-zero carbon—and eventually climate-positive—building sector with the intent of reversing climate change and ensuring a livable future for all.

From a practical standpoint Zero Carbon Certification is a comprehensive third-party verified, industry-recognized standard for credibly verifying that a building’s embodied and operational carbon emissions have been effectively neutralized. It requires projects to undergo a 12-month performance period in order to show that they are energy-efficient, combustion-free (or in the process of phasing out combustion), and powered entirely by renewable energy.

Zero Energy Certification

ILFI’s Zero Energy Certification program is a comprehensive standard for designing net-zero energy buildings, or buildings that produce 100% of the energy they consume annually via onsite renewables. The program requires project teams follow three key strategies:

• Reduce. Minimize operational energy usage from the outset by optimizing design, reducing thermal demands, and installing highly efficient building systems and equipment.
• Decarbonize. Eliminate combustion for heating, cooling, process demands, food preparation, and all other building uses.
• Offset. Account for all energy use associated with the project through the generation of renewable energy.

Similar to Zero Carbon Certification, projects aiming for Zero Energy must undergo a 12-month energy reporting/measuring period in order to verify that the building demonstrates net-zero energy usage based on actual—rather than modeled—performance.

Living Product Challenge

ILFI also administers the Living Product Challenge (LPC), a science-based holistic framework for creating products that are healthy, inspiring, and give more than they take away throughout their life-cycles. The program is intended to drive the design of products that are independently verified to be:

• Nontoxic and materially transparent. To ensure that products are environmentally responsible and human-safe, LPC products must be free from Red List ingredients.
• Socially responsible. Working conditions and business practices associated with the production of LPC products must be respectful of workers’ rights and make a positive impact on communities.
• Restorative and net-positive. Rather than “do less harm,” LPC products must actively generate benefits for the environment—that is, their ecological handprints must be greater than their ecological footprints.

Similar to the LBC, the Living Product Challenge is organized into seven performance areas encompassing 20 imperatives; all imperatives must be met to achieve full certification, though products can also earn Imperative or Petal certification for attaining certain imperatives.

The Benefits of Getting ILFI-Certified

Now that we have a better understanding of the Institute and its programs, let’s explore the many benefits of getting ILFI certified; for the sake of clarity and to avoid confusion, this section looks at building-level and product-level benefits separately.

Benefits for Buildings

Buildings—or more accurately, building owners, occupants, and communities—benefit from ILFI certification in a variety of ways, including:

Energy Independence

As previously mentioned, Living Building Challenge and Zero Energy–certified buildings must generate all of their electricity via onsite renewable energies, meaning they operate entirely independent from energy providers and are therefore immune to fluctuations in energy prices.

Total energy independence also means buildings are exempt from imposed rolling brown-outs/blackouts and enjoy increased resilience in the face of power outages—both of which have become all-too frequent occurrences as rising temperatures and extreme weather push municipal energy grids to their limits. For commercial buildings this independence ultimately helps minimize profit loss associated with forced periods of downtime; for residential buildings, energy independence means occupants are less likely to suffer adverse health effects associated with loss of heating or cooling during power outages.

Zero Carbon-certified buildings may also enjoy total energy independence if they produce all of their renewable energy on-site, though the program does not explicitly require it and allows projects to source electricity from renewable energy providers if necessary.

Water Independence

While not inherently applicable to Zero Energy and Zero Carbon-certified buildings, projects that achieve LBC certification through ILFI also reap the benefits of water independence in addition to energy independence. This is because the program’s Net Positive Water Imperative requires that all water be supplied by onsite rainwater collection, meaning LBC-certified buildings are not beholden to municipal water providers. As such they do not have to worry about monthly water bills nor are they at risk of losing access to clean, potable water during power outages.

Reduced Operating Costs

Because ILFI-certified buildings are designed to minimize energy usage, produce all or most of their own electricity on-site and, in the case of LBC-certified projects, collect all of their own water, long-term operating costs are greatly reduced—just ask the residents of Loom House, an LBC-certified home designed by The Miller Hull Partnership. “The homeowners tell us it costs less to operate their property each month than their cell phone bills,” Chris Hellstern, architect and Living Building Challenge services director with The Miller Hull Partnership, previously wrote for gb&d.

ILFI-certified buildings that are connected to the municipal power grid and which produce more energy than they consume can even earn money by selling that electricity back to the energy provider.

Increased Comfort

The implementation of energy-saving strategies like high performance insulation, extensive air-sealing, heat sinks, and solar shading devices means ILFI-certified projects rely less on mechanical systems for regulating temperature, airflow, and humidity and more on passive design solutions that leverage natural environmental factors to their advantage. This ultimately helps ensure that they remain comfortable spaces year round, regardless of outdoor weather conditions.

This is perhaps best exemplified by the HPA-designed Urban Frontier House, an LBC-certified single family residence in Billings, Montana. Despite the region’s extreme temperature fluctuations—which range between -36 and 108°F—the residence features no active heating or cooling but instead relies on overlapping structural insulated panels, abundant daylighting, blinds, a passive ventilation system, and circulated sun-warmed air to help the home regulate heat gain/loss throughout the year. “The home has proven to maintain a relatively stable indoor temperature year-round,” Alex Tyler, marketing manager and project designer at HPA, previously wrote for gb&d.

Improved Indoor Air Quality

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is another aspect that is especially high in LBC-certified buildings, as the program prohibits the use of materials containing Red List ingredients, or those “worst in class” substances—e.g. formaldehyde, lead, asbestos—known to cause human and environmental harm. The Red List also includes many volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a category of compounds whose high vapor pressure and low water solubility causes them to off-gas at room temperatures.

Without proper ventilation indoor VOCs can become concentrated at levels up to 10 times higher than outdoor levels, making them potentially dangerous indoor air pollutants. Prolonged exposure to certain VOCs can exacerbate or lead to the development of various respiratory conditions; others are known carcinogens, meaning they can increase occupants’ risk of developing cancer.

By prohibiting the use of Red List substances and requiring that all building materials comply with CDPH Standard Method v1. 1-2010 for low-VOC emitting coatings, paints, and sealants, the LBC certification program helps buildings achieve extremely high indoor air quality. Buildings that have achieved Zero Energy or Zero Carbon certification through ILFI also tend to have better-than-average IAQ thanks to their implementation of energy-efficient measures that improve airtightness and ventilation, as well as their avoidance of indoor combustion appliances, though they are not explicitly required to use Red List-free materials and products.

Benefits for Products

Companies and manufacturers who design products that are Living Product Challenge–certified enjoy the following benefits:

Improved Resilience

Because the Living Product Challenge requires that products have a net-positive water, energy, waste, and carbon handprint, manufacturers must take radical measures to electrify, decarbonize, dematerialize, and otherwise improve their operations via strategies that promote circularity and self-sufficiency. These improvements ultimately help companies become more resilient to the challenges, risks, and uncertainties our world is poised to encounter in coming years as a result of advanced anthropogenic climate change.

Greater Marketability & Enhanced Transparency

Living Product Challenge certification is a clear, reliable way for manufacturers to communicate to their consumer base that they are committed to transparency and green, responsible business practices. An LPC-certified label immediately signals that a product is Red List-free, part of an ethical value chain, supports equitable investment, has a neutral or positive environmental footprint, and more.

Improving product transparency makes it easier for customers to make purchasing decisions that align with their values, giving manufacturers of LPC-certified products a market advantage over other, less-scrupulous companies. This is especially true within the AEC sector, as many green building rating systems encourage and reward the use of healthy, responsible, and environmentally-friendly products and materials—traits that LPC products all possess.

ILFI’s searchable online database also makes it incredibly easy for architects and other AEC professionals to locate LPC products, improving their visibility and expanding their reach in the rapidly-growing market for green building materials.

Attract, Retain & Engage Employees

Experts say companies that demonstrate a verifiable commitment toward safe, sustainable, and equitable working conditions by achieving LPC certification are more likely to attract and retain talented individuals whose values compliment their own.

The holistic nature of the LPC program also provides ample opportunities to engage those employees and unify them around a common goal. When Humanscale—a leading designer of sustainable, ergonomic furniture—for example, first achieved LPC-certification for two of its products in 2016, the company noticed just how excited many of its employees were to work for a company that makes a net-positive impact on the world.

This positive response to LPC certification ultimately helped kick-start Humanscale’s robust sustainability program, a massive undertaking that involved getting more products certified, pursuing ILFI’s JUST Label, installing rainwater harvesting systems, and more. This could only be achieved by engaging everyone at the company; tasks were assigned to different teams in an effort to help evenly distribute program goals, leading to each department feeling a greater ownership of the work Humanscale was doing.