WASHINGTON, DC- The US Green Building Council has released its 2011 list of top 10 states for LEED-certified commercial and institutional green buildings on a per capita basis.

“Our local green building chapters from around the country have been instrumental in accelerating the adoption of green building policies and initiatives that drive construction locally,” Rick Fedrizzi, president and founding chair of USGBC said in a prepared statement.

Not surprisingly, the District of Columbia—although technically not a state—leads this list. The federal government, the city’s major tenant, has been emphasizing LEED-certification for several years. There are other drivers, however, behind a state’s high level of LEED certification, a USGBC spokeswoman tells GlobeSt.com. “Government incentives, or new zoning laws that encourage green building, drive a lot of this development,” she says. This was the case in New York, she adds, when the state revisited laws that essentially outlawed many green features for a commercial building.

With more than 31 square feet of LEED-certified space per person, the District of Columbia leads the nation. Next is Colorado, with 2.74 square feet per person in 2011. Illinois, Virginia and Washington, clocked in at 2.69, 2.42 and 2.18 square feet of LEED-certified space per person, respectively. The complete USGBC list of top ten states, in order, is: District of Columbia, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Washington, Maryland, Massachusetts, Texas, California, New York and Minnesota. USGBC compiled the list based on 2010 Census data.

All of these states have major incentive programs that encourage green building, the spokeswoman says. “There are 34 state governments with a LEED type of initiative.” When taking into account states with local level initiatives the number grows to 45, she says.

Some of the earliest examples include Colorado’s Executive Order # D005 05, which passed in 2005, Washington’s High Performance Buildings Act, passed in the same year, and the District of Columbia’s Green Building Act of 2006.

In 2009 Illinois passed a green state buildings law and developed a plan to green every school in the state. More recent measures have been put in place in Maryland, which adopted the 2012 International Green Construction Code, to go into effect in March 2012. Also in Maryland, the Public Utilities Commission adopted a policy that will drive building energy commissioning across the state and encourages utilities to offer incentives for green buildings.