Monday, January 10, 2011 By Nathan Peck | MiBiz npeck@mibiz.com

WEST MICHIGAN — Joseph Maguire sees opportunity in making sustainability a little clearer for building owners.

Maguire, president of the newly formed Society of Environmentally Responsible Facilities (SERF) and president of Wolverine Development Group, has launched SERF as a means for the property owners to certify their properties as green. Much of the problem with existing certification programs — which Maguire takes great care not to call any out by name — is that they are vague and that changes occur making it difficult for an owner to understand whether they are being responsible or not.

“We see a void, one of the voids is clarity and a lack of complexity. We realized we needed to be more clear in terms of our criteria,” Maguire said.

In order to be a SERF-certified facility, a building’s owner must complete a certification application that gauges the facility’s sustainability along 20 criteria, have a licensed architect or engineer sign off on the application, and submit the application and fees to SERF. The process doesn’t involve third-party evaluations, but rather relies on a self-guided process.

Maguire wants to speed the process and avoid creating the bureaucracy associated with programs such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification and its LEED Accredited Professionals (AP).

SERF comes along at a time where there is growing discontent over LEED and the USGBC’s policies. The USGBC is currently defending itself and the LEED certification against a class action lawsuit filed in October and has been criticized for the efficiency of buildings granted LEED certification.

The lawsuit, filed by Henry Gifford and Gifford Fuel Saving Inc. of New York City, alleges that LEED misleads owners about the energy efficiency of their buildings, is not based on sound science, and operates in a monopolistic fashion, squeezing businesses out of the marketplace who don’t seek LEED certification or LEED AP status. Gifford disputed a 2008 study conducted by the USGBC that found that LEED-certified buildings are more efficient than conventional construction and have a lower carbon footprint and alleged that the USGBC has misled building owners as a result.

The suit seeks $100 million in damages, and if granted class action status, plaintiffs would include owners who paid for LEED certification on false premises, professionals whose livelihoods have allegedly been harmed by LEED, and taxpayers whose money has subsidized LEED buildings.

The USGBC was contacted for this article, but would not comment on the lawsuit, citing a policy of not speaking about pending litigation.

In a recent West Michigan chapter study of 40 facilities, the USGBC found that 20 buildings were eligible to be scored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Star rating scheme, while the score for seven others had to be simulated by a USGBC calculator because the Energy Star system didn’t have a comparable building type. Thirteen buildings were not able to achieve an Energy Star or equivalent score, although not necessarily because the building received a failing score. The report did find that the aggregate score for all buildings in the study was about 28 percent better than the “average Energy Star building.”

SERF has quickly garnered interest, Maguire said, from property owners that are seeking to do right by their facilities, but have been turned off by the fees and drawn-out process with other certification programs.

“This has taken off faster than we anticipated. We’ve got a few new hires coming on in January to help manage this growth,” Maguire said.

For developers who have worked to build responsibly but have been turned off by the cost and headaches around LEED, the SERF certification is a welcome addition, said Rick DeKam, president of Midwest Realty Group. When developing Creekside Commons in Portage a decade ago, DeKam encountered stiff opposition from neighbors who did not want to see development of the property along West Center Avenue, a former celery farm. DeKam enlisted the help of environmental engineering and biology faculty from Western Michigan University to help design an onsite retention and filtration system to prevent grit and oil from parking lots from entering the watershed and to help restore a creek that once ran through the property.

“We’re not a company that paves from one end of the property to the other. We wanted to return this to something better than what it was,” DeKam said. “Just because you want to be profitable doesn’t mean you aren’t environmentally responsible.”

Maguire is looking to partner with faculty members at Michigan State University in order to ground the certification in sound science. He’s sensitive to criticism that by being an industry-driven standard, SERF may be greenwashing. Greenwashing, Maguire argued, is already taking place under existing certifications because the standards don’t necessarily mean a facility is energy efficient or is operated in a green manner.

“This was formed by businesspeople and property owners. We make no apologies for being property owners. We have the most skin in the game,” Maguire said. “The dialogue (around environmentalism) tends to be dominated by idealists and absolutists — spending other people’s money. This is practical environmental stewardship. We want something that is attainable and works.”