UC Merced Campus LEED Goals
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a third-party verification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. It ensures that a building’s design and construction strategies are aimed to maximize energy savings, water efficiency, and emission reduction, and improve indoor environmental air quality.
For the first seven years of UC Merced’s life, all newly constructed buildings on the UC Merced campus were required to achieve a minimum LEED silver certification for building, design, and construction. Since 2009, however, the certification requirement is gold.
As a commitment to the campus as a sustainable living laboratory, existing buildings will be certified under LEED Operations and Maintenance program through the LEED Lab class in the Engineering Service Learning program. Since 2005, UC Merced has had an on-campus LEED coordinator who has worked on every building project. The coordinator supports documentation compilation and compliance and ensures project review by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Merced 2020 Project
The Merced 2020 Project will double the physical size of the UC Merced campus to accommodate long-term student enrollment growth. All newly constructed buildings are required to achieve a minimum LEED certification gold.