Developers and owners love the LEED label for all that it brings–prestige, tax credits and environmentally minded tenants. According to a story in the New York Times today–Some Buildings Not Living Up to Green Label– the gap between the buildings that it certifies and their actual performance means that the U.S. Green Building Council will begin collecting data on the buildings that it certifies as well as energy performance.

The Federal Building in downtown Youngstown, Ohio, features an extensive use of natural light to illuminate offices and a white roof to reflect heat.

It has LEED certification, the country’s most recognized seal of approval for green buildings.

But the building is hardly a model of energy efficiency. According to an environmental assessment last year, it did not score high enough to qualify for the Energy Star label granted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which ranks buildings after looking at a year’s worth of utility bills.

Today and tomorrow in Las Vegas at UNLV, the National Clean Energy Summit has kicked off. A live broadcast of the event can be found on the summit Website. According to a CNBC interview this morning with John Podesta, CEO of the Center for American Progress, a new report on retrofitting America’s building stock will be released today. The cost to complete energy retrofits for 40% of the country’s buildings over the next 10 years, he says, will come to $500 billion, most of which will need to come from the private sector. The government’s part in kicking off this massive endeavor? Loan guarantees or loan support.

Sustainable Industries Digest teased a story today in its regular e-newsletter as such: “The green building industry has a dirty little secret: Until recently, few people really kept track of how so-called ‘high-performance buildings’ were actually performing.”

The story, entitled “The missing link” references an older study that calls into question performance modeling and the LEED label. With pending federal legislation that may require commercial property owners to measure energy performance, operating LEED buildings with intention should gain traction.

A study released in March 2008 by New Buildings Institute (NBI) looked at 121 of U.S. buildings that were certified by the LEED for New Construction (LEED-NC) rating system through 2006. Of those, only 25 percent are performing better than their counterparts that were built to code.

The study, titled “Energy Performance of LEED for New Construction Buildings,” showed a great deal of inconsistency in terms of many of the buildings’ actual-versus-expected performance. Because performance data is being collected and analyzed for very few buildings, not many designers, building owners or operators even know if their buildings are performing as advertised. It’s an issue of increasing concern, especially among insurance companies and law firms.

NBI’s study included data on just 22 percent of all LEED-NC buildings certified in the United States in 2006. Getting the data for the worst-performing buildings in the study was very difficult because they were being operated “with no intention,” says Mark Frankel, NBI’s technical director. “We couldn’t find anyone involved in the [maintenance and operations of the] building.”