An environmentally friendly home in Venice, California, designed by Melinda Gray.

By FELICITY BARRINGER

For the high-profile crowd that turned out to celebrate a new home in Venice, California, the attraction wasn’t just the company and the architectural detail. The house boasted the builders’ equivalent of a three-star Michelin rating: a LEED platinum certificate.
The actors John Cusack and Pierce Brosnan, with his wife, Keely Shaye Smith, a journalist, came last fall to see a house that the builders promised would “emit no harmful gases into the atmosphere,” “produce its own energy” and incorporate recycled materials, from concrete to countertops.
Behind the scenes were Tom Schey, a homebuilder in Santa Monica, and his business partner, Kelly Meyer, an environmentalist whose husband, Ron, is the president of Universal Studios. Ms. Meyer said their goal was to show that something energy-conscious “doesn’t have to look as if you got it off the bottom shelf of a healthfood store.
“It doesn’t have to smell like hemp,” she said.
That was probably a good thing. The four-bedroom house, designed by Melinda Gray, was for sale, with a $2.8 million asking price.
Its rating was built into that price. LEED - an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - is the hot designer label, and platinum is the badge of honor, the top classification given by the U.S. Green Building Council. “There’s kind of a green pride, like driving a Prius,” said Brenden McEneaney, a green building adviser to the city of Santa Monica, adding, “It’s spreading all over the place.”
Devised eight years ago for the commercial arena, the ratings now cover many things, including schools and retail interiors. But homes are the new frontier.
The LEED brand stands apart because of its four-level rankings - certified, silver, gold and platinum - and third-party verification. So far this year, 10,250 new home projects have registered for the council’s consideration, compared with 3,100 in 2006, the first year of the pilot home-rating system.
But try asking buyers used to conspicuous consumption (a 1,100-square-meter house) to embrace conspicuous nonconsumption (say, 225 square meters for a small family). Or to earn points by recycling and weighing all their construction debris . The imperatives of comfort and eco-friendliness are not always in sync.
For instance, the Brosnans, who admired Ms. Meyer’s house, are now building a home of their own and “really want to do it green,” said David Hertz, their architect. Mr. Brosnan may adopt many environmentally sound building techniques, but he is not going to live in a 225-squaremeter home, the architect said.
Mr. Hertz’s complaint goes beyond size. He says the rating system is rigid and cumbersome . The system is based on points earned for a variety of eco-friendly practices; builders choose among them, balancing the goals of cost control, design and high point totals.
Worries about climate change and rising energy costs are part of the equation: roughly 21 percent of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions come from homes; nearly 40 percent come from residential and commercial structures combined.
One requirement for getting a home certified is hiring an on-site inspector approved by the council to test the new systems and help fill out the huge amount of paperwork . The organization charges from $400 for a home to $22,500 for the largest buildings to register and certify costs.
Joel McKellar, a researcher with LS3P Associates, an architecture firm in Charleston, South Carolina, said that to earn credit for adequate natural light, “you have to calculate the area of the room, the area of the windows, how much visible transmittance of light there is.”
Is LEED a useful selling tool- Offered with great fanfare last fall on eBay for $2.8 million, the Meyer/Schey home in Venice, which can be seen at www.Project7ten.com, got no bids at the time; it recently found a potential buyer, for $2.5 million.
But Maria Chao, an architect in Amherst, Massachusetts, said her new home’s certification rating meant instant recognition. “This is a small town,” Ms. Chao said. “When I mention I live in the house on Snell Street, people say, ‘Oh, the green home.’”
Frances Anderton, a radio host and Los Angeles editor of Dwell, an architecture and design magazine, longs for the day when LEED recognition is irrelevant. “Architects should be offering a green building service,” Ms. Anderton said, “without needing a badge of pride.”