LEED

The US Green Building Council has developed Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) which is a framework for measuring green building design, construction and maintenance solutions.

To have a building LEED certified there are a number of criteria to be assessed and points awarded for compliance with each aspect, these are weighted for their considered impact.

A total number of points above a minimum threshold (40) will enable you to be certified to 'certified status' (40 points), 'Silver' (50 points), 'Gold' (60 points) and 'Platinum' (80 points).

The information contained in these pages provide guidance with respect to UK and Irish produced wood-based panels and their capacity for gaining points in certain identified areas of the LEED certification documents.

LEED was revised in April 2025 to version 5, LEED v4/v4.1 registrations are open until Q1 2026, with certifications allowed until 2032. The new LEED v5 has a number of prerequisite attributes that must be met and additional ones that will contribute towards a points score. It also introduces the Multi-Attribute Score (MAS) metric used in the Materials and Resources (MR) category that rewards products that have multiple sustainability attributes. The MAS is calculated at the individual product level and then aggregated to credit points for the entire project:

LEED v5 has an emphasis on decarbonisation including embodied carbon and this can be demonstrated via and EPD where a low Global Warming Potential (GWP) of products can be demonstrated and used to gain points, aiming for 5 points in Building Product Selection.

Wood-based panels are well placed to help lower the embodied carbon of buildings and contribute to LEED certification with the following attributes that are either stand alone or form part of WPIF member’s EPDs that can be used to assess products according to the LEED criteria.

Forestry Stewardship certification

All WPIF member produced Particleboard, OSB and MDF are FSC certified and some also have PEFC certification.

Recycled Content

Particleboard manufactured by WPIF members will contain recycled content. The recycled content as a proportion of the total wood content is on average approximately 70%.

Local sourcing of raw materials

All WPIF member produced Particleboard, OSB and MDF uses wood sourced in the country of manufacture (i.e. UK or Ireland). This will help lower GWP. Biogenic Carbon Wood-based panels, like all wood materials, contain biogenic carbon that will help reduce the GWP.

Biogenic Carbon

Wood-based panels, like all wood materials, contain biogenic carbon that will help reduce the GWP.

Formaldehyde and VOC emission