Earning credit SS 7.1 Heat Island Effect, Non-Roof could be accomplished by using light colored concrete pavement or an open grid pavement system like pervious concrete for at least 50 percent of the site's hardscape.

Energy & atmosphere
This category establishes energy efficiency and system performance goals, encourages renewable and alternative energy sources and supports ozone protection protocols. Once in place, concrete offers significant energy savings over the lifetime of a building or pavement. In structures, concrete's thermal mass - bolstered by insulating materials - affords high R-factors and moderates temperature swings by storing and releasing energy needed for heating and cooling. This fact allows designers to downsize the typical HVAC system, which increases energy performance even further.

The light color and reflectivity of concrete pavement makes it less costly to illuminate at night. During the day it keeps the surrounding areas much cooler than asphalt. This has a major impact on controlling the Heat Island Effect. The use of concrete makes earning points under EA Credit 1 Optimize Energy Performance much easier. This unique credit allows for 1 to 10 points based on achieving increasing levels of energy performance above the baseline in the prerequisite standard to reduce environmental and economic impacts associated with excessive energy use.

Materials & resources
The Materials and Resources category provides both old and new concrete the chance to affect earning more credits (MR credits 1.1 and 1.2 Building Reuse). In certain situations reusing an existing structure rather than knocking it down to make way for something new makes better environmental sense. This reduces the amount of demolition debris ending up in landfills.

Because of their durability, old concrete structures offer better opportunities to take advantage of building reuse. MR credits 2.1 and 2.2, Construction Waste Management, offer points for diverting construction, demolition and land-clearing debris from disposal in landfills and incinerators. Old concrete that has served its useful life can be crushed and reused as aggregate base. Calculations are done by weight or volume, which offers concrete a unique advantage.