Green Building Rating System

There are various voluntary green building rating and certification systems, programs and tools developed and applied around the world. We feature some of them here:

LEED ® : Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

LEED is an internationally recognized green building voluntary certification system, providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED provides building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

LEED is flexible enough to apply to all building types – commercial as well as residential. It works throughout the building lifecycle – design and construction, operations and maintenance, tenant fitout, and significant retrofit. And LEED for Neighborhood Development extends the benefits of LEED beyond the building footprint into the neighborhood it serves. For further information on LEED go to: http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1988

BREEAM: BRE Environmental Assessment Method

BREEAM is also a voluntary environmental assessment method for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de facto measure used to describe a building's environmental performance in the UK and many countries around the world.

BREEAM provides clients, developers, designers and others with: • Market recognition for low environmental impact buildings. • Assurance that best environmental practice is incorporated into a building. • Inspiration to find innovative solutions that minimize the environmental impact. • A benchmark that is higher than regulation. • A tool to help reduce running costs, improve working and living environments. • A standard that demonstrates progress towards corporate and organizational environmental objectives.

BREEAM addresses wide-ranging environmental and sustainability issues and enables developers and designers to prove the environmental credentials of their buildings to planners and clients. It: • uses a straightforward scoring system that is transparent, easy to understand and supported by evidence-based research • has a positive influence on the design, construction and management of buildings • sets and maintains a robust technical standard with rigorous quality assurance and certification For further information on BREEAM go to http://www.breeam.org/

Green Star

Green Star is a comprehensive, national, voluntary environmental rating system that evaluates the environmental design and construction of buildings in Australia. Green Star was developed for the property industry in order to: • Establish a common language; • Set a standard of measurement for green buildings; • Promote integrated, whole-building design; • Recognise environmental leadership; • Identify building life-cycle impacts; and • Raise awareness of green building benefits. For further information on Green Star go to: http://www.gbca.org.au/green-star/green-star-overview.

CASBEE

Promotion of sustainability is one of the great challenges facing humankind. Since the building industry started to move toward the promotion of sustainable building in the latter half of the 1980's, various techniques to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings have been developed.

In Japan, a joint industrial/government/academic project was initiated with the support of the Housing Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), in April 2001, which led to the establishment of a new organization, the Japan GreenBuild Council (JaGBC) / Japan Sustainable Building Consortium (JSBC), with its secretariat administered by the Institute for Building Environment and Energy Conservation (IBEC). JaGBC, JSBC and subcommittees are together working on R&D of the Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE). Today, the enhancement and diffusion of CASBEE are being promoted under the MLIT Environmental Action Plan (June 2004) and the Kyoto Protocol Target Achievement Plan (approved by the Cabinet on April 28, 2005). In recent years, several local authorities introduced CASBEE into their building administration. Consequently, environmental performance assessment of buildings in now carried out in many buildings in Japan. For further information on CASBEE go to: http://www.ibec.or.jp/CASBEE/english/index.htm

The Green Globes System

It is a revolutionary building environmental design and management tool. It delivers an online assessment protocol, rating system and guidance for green building design, operation and management. It is interactive, flexible and affordable, and provides market recognition of a building’s environmental attributes through third-party verification. For further information on  the Green Globes System go to: http://www.greenglobes.com/