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World Green Building Rating Systems: A Comparative Study

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 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CUM EXHIBITION ON BUILDING UTILITIES 2016 ,
DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA,
NEW DELHI 110025, INDIA

World Green Building Rating Systems: A Comparative Study

Mohd. Ahmeda, Mohd Abul Hasanb*, Javed Mallicka

a
King Khalid University, Abha - 61411, KSA
b
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi-110025, India

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article history: The green building rating systems has been in practice for last three decades around the world. The
Received 00 December 00 developed and developing countries have their own rating systems and assessment/certification methods
Received in revised form 00 January 00 to qualify the building green or sustainable. Some of the prominent rating systems are, [BREEAM (UK),
Accepted 00 February 00 LEED (USA), GREEN STAR (Australia)], [GRIHA (India), SAGRS (Saudi Arabia)] and [SBTool
(collaborative)] respectively launched by developed countries, developing countries and group of
Keywords: countries. The green building rating systems focus primarily on energy, environmental and sustainability.
Rating System The paper presents an insight into green building rating systems aspects and motives. Rating system
Green Building comparative study identifies rating system according to countries status wise development. Such study
Construction will certainly be helpful in unification of building rating systems and will pave the way for coordinated
Sustainable effort to make green construction and sustainable development throughout the world.
© 2013 xxxxxxxx. Hosting by Enriched Publications

15) Service Quality 16) Culture and perceptual aspect 17) Social and
1. Introduction Economic aspect 18) Innovation & Design Process 19) Ecology
Green rating systems that provide recommendations to make a
Green Building or Green Construction or Sustainable Building or high building “green” are design type rating system type. The green rating
performance building is a process that is environmentally caring and systems that provide green level certification procedure are green
resource-efficient throughout a building's life cycle from site planning to performance type system (Ding, 2008). Reed et al. (2009) provide an
design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. international comparison of green rating systems that offers an excellent
The sustainable development concept has developed during the 1960s starting point for understanding the differences and similarities among the
energy crisis and environmental pollution concerns (Mao et al., 2009). various rating systems. The benchmarks are also developed for comparing
The Rachel Carson (Carsen, 1962) is the one who first relates green green building schemes (Lee and Burnett, 2008).
building as a main component to sustainable development. Green building Following section provides brief review of green building rating
rating system can contribute in reducing the impacts of buildings on the systems (GBRS) conceived by developed countries, developing countries
environment and human health issues through organizing the vast array of and group of countries. (BREEAM, 2014, LEED, 2014, Green globe
practices, techniques, and skills (USGBC, 2009).. The buildings are 2000, EARI, 2015)
assessed for green rating in pre-selected evaluation categories. The
particular green rating systems select suitable evaluation categories 1.1. Developed countries
depending on the construction project type and type of building. The
evaluation categories have number of criterion to be assessed for green BREEM (Building Research Establishment Environmental
rating. Assessment Method)
Following is the list of various evaluation categories used by the green BREEAM was developed in the UK in the years 1990 and was a pioneer
building rating systems (GBRS) (Vyas and Jha, 2012). in providing the first-ever building assessment methodology addressing
1) Sustainable Sites 2) Water Efficiency 3) Energy & Atmosphere 4) wide-ranging environmental and sustainability issues. BREEAM uses
Materials & Resources 5) Indoor Environmental Quality 6) Innovation & benchmarking scheme for level of certification award. The measures used
Design Process 7) Regional Priority 8) Location & Linkages 9) represent a broad range of categories and criteria from energy to ecology.
Awareness & Education 10) Health and Well-being 11) Waste They include aspects related to energy and water use, the internal
Management 12) Transport 13) Management Process 14) Pollution

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91-9868718008.

E-mail address: mahasan@[Link]
2 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CUM EXHIBITION ON BUILDING UTILITIES 2016, JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA, NEW DELHI

environment (health and well-being), pollution, transport, materials, based on accepted energy and environmental principles, seeks to strike a
waste, ecology and management processes. balance between the established practices and emerging concepts, both
national and international. This rating system is divided into: sustainable
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) site planning, health and well-being, building planning and construction,
LEED, is an internationally-recognized green building certification energy: end use, energy: renewable, recycle, recharge and reuse of water,
system, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in waste management, building operation and maintenance, and innovation
March 2000. LEED provides building owners and operators with a points.
framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable
green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions GBAS
The LEED measures the overall performance in seven categories. China’s green building assessment method, GBAS was introduced in
1. Sustainable Sites 2. Energy & Atmosphere 3. Materials & Resources 2006 and is a credit-based system. This standard is applicable for
4. Water Efficiency 5. Energy & Atmosphere 6. Indoor Environmental evaluation of existing residential buildings, and three kinds of public
Quality 7. Regional Priority buildings: office buildings, mall buildings, and hotel buildings. Green
LEED system uses benchmarking scheme and credit rating scheme to building evaluation indicators system consists of six indicators that are:
level of certification award. It is the most widely used GBRS. BREEAM land-saving and outdoor environment, energy-saving and energy
and LEED green rating system became the base system for the utilization, water-saving and water resources utilization, materials-saving
development of other country rating tools. LEED rating is applicable to and materials resources utilization, indoor environment quality and
new construction, existing buildings, commercial interiors, core and shell, operation management. This system certifies buildings from 1 to 3 stars.
homes, neighborhood development, school, and retail building types.
Pearl Rating System for Estidama
CASBEE (Comprehensive Assessment System for Building  Pearl Rating System for Estidama based on LEED rating system is
Environmental Efficiency) developed for UAE in 2008. Pearl Rating System measures the overall
CASBEE has been developed in 2001 by coordinated effort of industry, performance in seven categories namely, Integrated Development
Process, Natural Systems, Livable Communities, Precious Water,
government, academia and Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and
Resourceful Energy, Stewarding Materials, Innovating Practice. It is
Transport. CASBEE is composed of four assessment tools corresponding applicable to Community Buildings, Villas, Temporary Villas and
to the building lifecycle. "CASBEE Family" is the collective name for Buildings.
these four tools namely for Predesign, for New Construction, for Existing
Building and for Renovation, to serve at each stage of the design process. 1.3. Countries Group
CASBEE is designed to accommodate a wide range of uses (offices,
schools, apartments, etc.) in the evaluated buildings. CASBEE covers the SBTool ( formerly GBTool)
assessment fields of energy efficiency, resource efficiency, local
environment, and indoor environment. SBTool for rating of green building is a collective effort of 21 developed
and developing countries group and maintained by the International
DGNB (GeSBC- German Sustainable Building Certificate) Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (IISBE). Although it is not
The German Sustainable Building Certification was developed by the intended for direct application by stakeholders, members of national
German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) in 2007 and awards Green Building Challenge (GBC) teams are free to draw from it in whole
outstanding buildings in the categories bronze, silver, and gold. Six or part for use in the creation of assessment tools. SBTool commissioned
subjects affect the evaluation: ecology, economy, social-cultural and in 2000 is a process to assess the potential energy and environmental
functional topics, techniques, processes, and location. performance of the projects.
The certificate is based on the concept of integral planning that SBTool is most modern and evolving rating system as it address very
defines, at an early stage, the aims of sustainable construction. In this way, different priorities, technologies, building traditions and even cultural
sustainable buildings can be designed based on the current state of values that exist in various regions and countries. SBTool can assess both
technology, – and they can communicate their quality with this new new building and renovated projects.
certificate. In SBTool, scores are assigned in a range of -2 to +5, where: - 2 and -1
are levels of performance below the acceptable level in your region, for
Green Globes occupancies specified; 0 is the minimum level of acceptable performance
Green Globes based on the BREEAM rating system is launched by in your region for occupancies specified; 3 is Best Practise; and 5 is the
Canada in 2000. The seven categories are pre-selected for buildings best technically achievable, without consideration of cost.
assessment, namely, Energy, Indoor Environment, Site, Water, Resources,
Emissions, and Project/Environmental Management. Green Globes helps
both with the new construction of commercial buildings and with the
1. Discussions
maintenance and improvement of existing buildings.

The developed and developing countries have their own rating systems
1.2. Developing countries
and assessment/certification methods. The green building rating systems
have been developed either green building design type or green building
GRIHA (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment)
performance type. The green building certification level may be awarding
GRIHA launched in 2007,in India. by Centre for Research on Sustainable
based on bench marching scheme (reference value term) or credit point
Building Science, TERI as TERI-GRIHA. TERI-GRIHA further modified
scheme (in absolute value term). The certification based on bench
to GRIHA as the Indian National rating system after incorporating various
marching scheme will be suitable only for particular region region while
modifications suggested by a group of architects and experts. This
certification based on credit point scheme will be internationally
assessment method has qualitative and quantitative approach, so it would
applicable. Although, the green building rating systems has been in
be able to rate a building on the degree of its greenness. The rating system
practice for last three decades, green building activities or rather concern
 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CUM EXHIBITION ON BUILDING UTILITIES 2016, JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA 3

of construction industry to environment and sustainability in some  The management process, regional ecology and, regional cultural and
countries, including the development countries, started very recently. The perceptual aspect, the important criteria, are yet to be incorporated in
international building council should impress these countries to most of the GBRS.
implement the green tools to get the proven energy and resource benefits.  The Middle East developing countries are the only countries that
The leading developed countries that are using LEED, green building consider the cultural issues as criteria for the green building
rating system and have not developed self-rating system, for their green assessments.
building activities are Russia (starts using from 2013) and China (starts  Countries have multiple green building rating systems operating in
using from 2009) . Another important issue related to green building their country, which may by confusing the minds of the stack holders.
rating systems is that most of the countries have multiple green building Countries should work in coordination to unify or at least harmonizing
rating systems operating in their countries, which is creating confusion in the different green building rating systems followed in the particular
mind of the stack holders about the green building assessment and their country.
rating and it will hinder healthy competition and progress. Some
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