Why has it been so difficult to add acoustics to the criteria of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system?

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is the most popular green building rating system in use in the United States. There are LEED rating systems for a variety of different building types. The LEED system rates the sustainability and performance in several categories including the indoor environmental quality (IEQ). While LEED incorporates many important IEQ factors including air quality and daylighting in all the rating systems, acoustics has been included only in LEED for schools and the soon to be released LEED for healthcare. The development and subsequent modification of the acoustics portion of LEED for schools highlights some of the problems involved with modifying LEED to include acoustics and some of the issues involved in implementing a LEED rating system that includes acoustics. This paper will discuss why including acoustics within LEED rating systems has been and will continue to be problematic.