By a large margin, Texas’ 6,945 LEED projects represent the most LEED-certified residential construction of any state in the U.S., and more than half of those projects — 3,797 — are in the  Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area, which also has the largest number of metro area projects nationwide according to ABODO.

Of the 10 U.S. cities with the most LEED-certified commercial projects, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington ranks No. 9 with 135,799,519 square feet of construction.

Across the United States, the total square footage of LEED-certified residential construction is an astounding 1.32 billion, which is about 89 percent the size of Staten Island or the equivalent of 23,000 football fields.

The U.S. Green Building Council developed Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification as a framework to sustainable building practices. By reducing the carbon footprint, energy costs, and other environmentally unfriendly effects of traditional residential and commercial building, LEED certification accounts for about 40 percent of the impact that green construction makes on the economy.

Leticia McCadden with USGBC anticipates LEED contributing almost $30 million to the nation’s GDP in 2018, and a 2016 study conducted by Dodge Data and Analytics projected that green building worldwide would double every three years.