In commercial building, LEED Certification is seeing increased importance as a factor in determining materials and design. Architects, specifiers and building owners select their materials based on the ability to achieve energy-efficient, sustainable designs which can be measured in terms of their cost savings during construction and throughout usage.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an internationally recognized building certification system for green building, sometimes referred to as a Green Building Rating System™. It’s actually a framework for assessing building performance and meeting sustainable goals. It’s voluntary and emphasizes leading strategies for commercial building in water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, sustainable site development and indoor environmental quality.

In order to achieve LEED certification, credits in these specific areas must be earned, so materials with key performance standards should be specified and utilized in construction or remodeling. Polyiso roof insulation is one of the materials that can assist in creating a design strategy that meets LEED requirements in the categories of Energy & Atmosphere and Materials & Resources. Atlas Roofing manufactures a roofing insulation product line of sheet polyiso materials called ACFoam®, which contains features important for these two categories.

For the Energy & Atmosphere category LEED credits, Atlas ACFoam® polyiso insulation contains two important characteristics. It provides the highest thermal resistance per square inch because it’s polyiso. When configured correctly it also enables compliance with ASHRAE 90.1-2007. Both of these necessarily make it a key choice in energy performance for meeting the Energy & Atmosphere requirements.

For the Materials & Resources LEED category, the benefits of polyiso roof insulation and Atlas ACFoam® are even more numerous. In construction waste management and materials reuse, polyiso can drive performance because in many cases it can be easily reused; thus reducing waste and the demand for newly manufactured materials.

ACFoam® is also manufactured with recycled content, and can be manufactured and ordered with various concentrations of recycled product. This enables the LEED credits for recycled content. Additionally, because of Atlas’s many North American plants, there are building locations where it’s possible to receive credits for constructing with local / regional materials.

Depending on which products are ordered, the rapidly renewable credits can also be earned for using polyiso insulation. Using the ACFoam® Products with wood facers bonded to them, an additional Materials & Resources credit can be received because these products are also FSC-Certified, meaning they were raised in a carefully managed forest.

Detailed information on using polyiso products from Atlas Roofing can be viewed at www.GreenZone.com and all of Atlas polyiso products at www.AtlasRoofing.com.