Elsevier

Building and Environment

Volume 123, October 2017, Pages 243-260
Building and Environment

A critical comparison of green building rating systems

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2017.07.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Indoor Environment Quality, Energy, and Material are the main focus in green rating systems.

  • The total categories, points, and mandatory credits of analysed rating schemes tend to increase and more comprehensive.

  • BREEAM is considered as the strongest rating system at present.

  • Currently, no rating scheme could assess a project in all aspects of sustainability.

Abstract

Various green rating systems are established globally to evaluate the sustainability of construction projects. Their categories and criteria have been under constant updates to follow the sustainable trend of building development. This paper aims to develop a systematic review of the development of green rating systems. The specific objectives are: 1) discover how interest and research in green rating systems have developed; 2) identify the similarity, difference, strength and weakness of green rating systems; 3) examine whether they fully assess the projects in all aspects of sustainability. Specifically, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Assessment Method), CASBEE (Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency) and Green Star NZ were analysed in this paper. The results indicate that BREEAM, LEED, and CASBEE have been utilized since late the 2000s while Green Star NZ is still in its earlier stages. 70% of the research papers focusing on BREEAM, LEED, CASBEE are developed geographically in the USA, Canada, the UK, China, and Australia. Although these four rating systems were initiated in different contexts with different standards, Indoor Environment Quality, Energy, and Material are core common categories for all. Environmental concerns are the main focus in New Construction manuals while Society is emphasized in Neighbourhood Development manuals. Currently, BREEAM has been the only tool which could assess all four sustainable factors. Further in-depth research is anticipated to focus more on economic and institutional factors to improve the capability of green rating systems for sustainability assessment purposes.

Introduction

The construction industry plays an important role in satisfying the needs of society, enhancing the quality of life [1], [2], [3], and contributing to the economic growth of a country [3], [4], [5], [6]. However, it has been heavily criticised for being a major contributor to carbon emissions, environmental degradation, and global warming [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] due to its utilization of a large proportion of natural resources and energy consumption [11], [12], [13], [14]. The building sector consumes a third of global resources [15], [16], one sixth of global freshwater withdrawals [17], 25% of wood harvested [16], and 40% of all raw materials [16]. Approximately 10% of all global energy supply takes place during the manufacturing of building materials [10], [15]. Also, the building sector generates a large amount of construction and demolition waste, accounting for 40% of total solid waste in developed countries [18], [19], [20]. Moreover, the construction industry is responsible for major energy consumption, accounting for 40–50% of all energy usage and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions globally [21], [22], [23], [24], [25].

Recognizing the importance of sustainable building practices, “going green” and “environment sustainability” has been introduced for many years [10], [26]. However, construction is still a major energy consumer based on official statistics [10]. This could be due to the passive attitude of construction practitioners towards adopting sustainable solutions [7]. Facing the rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns, the demand for sustainable building facilities with minimal environmental impact has been pushed recently [27], [28], [29].

Authorities and organizations initiated the rating systems for green buildings to minimize/optimize consumption of natural resources and control pollution. Buildings certified by those rating systems are considered as consuming less energy, providing a better living environment and contributing to the overall reputation of the property [30]. It is estimated that there are approximately 600 green rating systems globally [31]. BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Assessment Method) is known as the first rating tool to assess building performance based on certain target values for different criteria [32], [33], [34]. In addition, numerous schemes such as the United States' LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), Canada's LEED Canada, France's HQE (High Environmental Quality), Germany's DGNB (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen e.V.), Australia's Green Star, New Zealand's Green Star, Japan's CASBEE (Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency), Hong Kong's BEAM (Building Environmental Assessment Method), Singapore’ BCA (Building and Construction Authority) Green Mark Scheme are currently being utilized to evaluate building performances. BREEAM certified buildings could consume 6–30% lower energy costs than non-certified buildings [35], [36] while LEED certified properties consume 18–39% lower energy usage than non-certified properties [35], [37], [38], [39]. However, the focus on green credentials evidenced such as LEED misses the larger picture, sustainable aspect [40]. According to Berardi [41], and Runde and Thoyre [40], the impact of sustainability will extend far beyond green buildings in the near future. Concerning this, all leading green building rating systems have been continuously updating their criteria. LEED had a major update in 2013 with LEED v4, and it just updated its rating tools in mid-2016 [42]. While the major update to BREEAM happened in mid-2014 with BREEAM UK New Construction [43]. Mid-2015 and mid-2016 saw the latest version of Green Star Australia and Green Star New Zealand respectively [44], [45]. Besides, international standards about sustainable buildings have also created. For example, ISO/TC 59/SC 17 was created in 2002 to implement aspects of sustainability in the building sector [46].

Although green building rating certifications have been the focus of various researchers during the past 20 years, there is still no systematic review of the detailed criteria and the updated process of each rating system. A number of papers focused on the trend and credits in an individual rating tool, however, a comprehensive comparison of tools has not been established. For example, Todd [47] focused on the global trends in LEED-NC and LEED-EBOM besides investigating the achievement of individual LEED credits. Murakami [48] introduced the concept and framework of the CASBEE-City. Cheng and Ma [49] adopted data mining techniques to examine the relationship between LEED credits and climate factors. While other researchers made comparisons among green rating schemes, studies to examine the update and the global trend of those schemes together or research about their capability in promoting the sustainability are lacking. Lee and Burnett [50], for instance, analysed the energy use assessment of HK-BEAM, BREEAM, and LEED. Schwartz and Raslan [37] examined the impact of building energy simulation tools on BREEAM and LEED ratings. Ng [52] tried to find out the properties and standards of various building environmental assessment ratings on evaluating carbon emissions. Besides research papers, projects focusing on sustainable indicators for buildings had also been carried out. For example, Super Buildings project funded by European Commission was conducted during 2010–2012 by leading European organizations and companies [53]. However, this project focused more on the European context where BREEAM is accounting for 80% of the market [43], [54], [55], [56], which may not provide an inclusive view. This paper, therefore, aims to develop a systematic review of the development of green rating systems focusing on the well-known global schemes with LEED in the Americas, BREEAM in the Europe, CASBEE in the Asia, and Green Star in the Australasia. The specific objectives are:

  • 1

    Discover how interest and research in green rating systems have developed

  • 2

    Identify the similarity, difference, strength, and weakness of green rating systems

  • 3.

    Examine whether they fully assess the projects in all aspects of sustainability.

Section snippets

Green vs sustainable buildings

Green and Sustainable building have been used interchangeably [10], [40], [41], [57], but these two terms are far from synonymous [40], [41], [57]. Cole [58] described Green as “building design strategies that are less environmentally and ecologically damaging than typical practice” [59], [60] in 1999. While Kua and Lee [61], and Yoshida and Sugiura [62] defined Green building as “one that meets certain criteria for environmental performance” [61]. In 2008, it was indicated that Green is “a

Green rating systems

During this study, BREEAM, LEED, CASBEE, and Green Star NZ, were analysed in detail. The rationale to select these rating systems is based on considering BREEAM, LEED, and CASBEE as globally well-known leading ones alongside Green Star NZ, which in comparison is a relatively new system that has recently released its latest version and New Zealand has subsequently seen a significant increase in the number of registered green buildings.

Research methodology

This research utilized a two-step approach to review green certifications comprehensively, see Fig. 8.

a. Initially, a systematic desktop search was carried out via major scientific databases namely, Scopus and Web of Science (WOS), to identify the relevant journals for this study. WOS and Scopus are seen as the most widespread databases covering publications in various fields [121]. WOS has a strong coverage with papers published since 1990 and English is the main language in its most journals

Selection of relevant papers

A total of 408 papers were identified in the above-mentioned eight journals; however, 206 papers were delimitated as none of BREEAM, LEED, CASBEE, or Green Star NZ were the main focus. It was discovered that the first set of LEED and BREEAM related papers were published in 1998, see Fig. 9. This field attracted the attention of researchers by the end of the 2000s. The number of published papers increased dramatically from 8 papers in 2010 to 36 papers in 2016.

BR&I contributed the highest number

Discussion

The comprehensive review of relevant papers provides strong evidence of the essence and the recognition of green rating systems to the construction industry recently. BREEAM, LEED, CASBEE, and Green Star NZ have been researched in 202 papers in eight journals during 1998–2016, and a dramatic increase in the number of papers since the mid-2000s is noted. It is consistent with Eichholtz [128]’s statement in which the popular of green building has greatly increased since 2000. The review confirms

Conclusion

All of the building rating systems have evolved over the years and have been updated to become more demanding in line with technological advances. This paper aims to develop a systematic review of the development of green rating systems focusing on four well-known rating systems, namely BREEAM, LEED, CASBEE, and Green Star NZ to 1) discover how interest and research in green rating systems have developed; 2) identify the similarity, difference, strength and weakness of green rating systems; 3)

Acknowledgement

This paper is a significant upgrade to the paper “Green Building Assessment Schemes: A critical comparison among BREEAM, LEED, and Green Star NZ” presented at the International Conference on Sustainable Building Asia in South Korea on 11–14 December 2016.

This research has been supported with Vice Chancellor Doctoral Scholarship by Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.

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