Innosphere earns LEED Platinum

FORT COLLINS – The Rocky Mountain Innosphere, 320 E. Vine St. in Fort
Collins, has earned LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green
Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification
Institute. The Innosphere was recognized for its low energy and water
use, natural lighting, solar generation, regionally sourced materials
and diverting construction waste from the landfill.

The 32,260-square-foot building opened in January and houses about two
dozen startup companies in the fields of clean energy, bioscience,
information technology, innovation and research. The nonprofit
Innosphere was formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Innovation
Initiative or RMI2.

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LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certification
provides an objective and internationally recognized standard for what
constitutes a “green” or high-performance building. A very small
percentage of buildings across the country actually achieve the Platinum
designation, the highest level awarded.

The Innosphere’s sustainable building milestones included 35 percent
less indoor water use than a typical office building; 80 percent
construction waste diversion; 32 percent recycled content of materials;
21 percent regional material procurement, and the generation of 27
percent of total energy cost of the building through on-site solar
cells, according to the USGBC. Other notable features include abundant
natural day-lighting, low-emitting and nontoxic materials, paints and
finishes, and the implementation of a measurement and verification plan
to track energy and systems that can quickly identify any efficiency
issues.

“The success of the Innosphere is a result of a focused community effort
that involved excellent collaboration from project conception through
integrated design and construction,” according to Brian Dunbar,
executive director of the Institute for the Built Environment at
Colorado State University, part of the Innosphere project team. Other
members included Preview Architecture, Sherman Design LLC, Beaudin Ganze
Consulting Engineers, Verde LLC, Dohn Construction and Wirsol Solar.

For more information on the Innosphere, go to www.rmi2.org.