“There is no credible path to address climate change without a fundamental shift in the building and construction sector.”
-Inger Andersen, UN Environment Programme Executive Director
Sustainable Building Construction and Renovation
The UW Green Building Standard ensures that all construction and renovation projects follow guidelines to maximize energy and water efficiency, reduce embodied carbon, and align with principles of equity, ecological harmony and health & well-being. The standard requires UW buildings to hit specific targets for energy, water and embodied carbon.
Green building standard Watch the webinar
The standard includes a minimum requirement of LEED Gold certification for new buildings. The UW Sustainability Map shows which current campus buildings are LEED certified.
How we work toward efficiency 
Learn how UW Facilities is working to optimize our buildings, the first step in the Energy Transformation effort.
Operating Buildings Sustainably
The UW's Seattle campus has about 170 buildings with more than 19 million square feet of space. The Resource Conservation program is working to ensure these buildings are operating as efficiently as possible.
The UW’s energy consumption per square foot of building space is currently nearly twice as high as state targets, partially because of the energy requirements of research labs. Lab space accounts for roughly 22% of UW's footprint, but consumes approximately 65% of campus energy. The Seattle campus also has many older campus buildings that no longer operate as originally intended. Energy efficiency work is tied to modernizing the systems that operate the buildings. This includes adding and managing meters, upgrading buildings controls and adding data analytic capacity to enable continuous performance monitoring and troubleshooting. These actions are the first step in the Energy Transformation work to decarbonize our campus.
UW students in the College of Built Environments constructing the UW Farm's Cultural Kitchen
Academics and research
The College of Built Environments educates students in architecture, construction management, landscape architecture, real estate, and urban design, all with a vision that:
“imagines a just and beautiful world where we teach, research, and engage to influence the trajectories of climate change, social justice, and human health, by defining built environments as complex interconnections between constructed and natural worlds and their impacts on society. ”
The Carbon Leadership Forum, hosted at the UW, is a "professional community of manufacturers, designers, builders and academics focused on reducing the carbon ‘embodied’ in building materials."
UW Civil and Environmental Engineering has a Construction, Energy and Sustainable Infrastructure research area, including research on building materials and construction.
UW buildings in the news
- Rosling Center is LEED Platinum, the highest standard in sustainable building practices
- Founders Hall is a model of sustainable construction, collaborative learning and community building
- New Life Sciences Building is a nexus for modern-age teaching and research at the UW
Learn more
Watch the Green Building Standards webinar with UW Sustainability Director Lisa Dulude to learn more about how the UW is ensuring our buildings are built and renovated with sustainability at the forefront. Recorded in May 2024.