Utah leads California in LEED Buildings per capita

While California may lead the country with the most number of Green Cities (13 of the Top 50), many other Western states are outperforming them in number of Green Buildings per capita. New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Hawaii, and Colorado, all have higher percentages of LEED buildings than California. Additionally, the Pacific Northwest leads the way and is by far the strongest Green sector in the West.

The following are a list of Western States with the corresponding numbers of LEED buildings that are Certified. There may be others in process, or simply Registered, but this only includes those projects that have completed the process. Below this are State populations, followed by state per capita rankings.

LEED Certified buildings by State (as of Mar 10, 2008):
California - 161
Washington - 81
Oregon - 69
Colorado - 45
Arizona - 34
Utah - 14
New Mexico - 10
Hawaii - 9
Nevada - 8
Idaho - 6
Montana – 4
Alaska - 2
Wyoming - 1

State populations:
California - 36,553,215
Washington - 6,395,798
Arizona - 6,338,755
Colorado - 4,861,515
Oregon - 3,747,455
Utah - 2,645,330
Nevada - 2,565,382
New Mexico - 1,969,915
Idaho - 1,499,402
Hawaii - 1,283,388
Montana - 957,861
Alaska - 683,478
Wyoming - 522,830

Dividing the population by number of LEED buildings yields some interesting discoveries in which seven Western States are outperforming California percentage-wise:

1-Oregon – 1841
2-Washington – 1266
3-Colorado – 926
4-Hawaii - 701
5-Arizona – 536
6-Utah – 529
7-New Mexico - 508
8-California - 440
9-Montana - 418
10-Idaho - 400
11-Nevada – 312
12-Alaska - 293
13-Wyoming - 191