Environmental and health related criteria for buildings - ANEC

IBO - Environmental and Health related Criteria for Buildings
4.2. Historical review
First Systems
The beginning of environmental building assessment systems dates back to the late 1980s.
The objectives were raising the demand for environmentally friendly buildings, finding
innovative solutions that minimize the environmental impact and enhancing best practice
examples. The first comprehensive assessment system was launched by BRE (Building
Research Establishment) in the United Kingdoms in 1990 (http://www.breeam.org). It was
called BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) and revised several times. Today
it is the most widely used environmental label for buildings, with over 110,000 buildings
certified and over half a million registered for certification. BREEAM is used all around the
world and can be readily adapted to local regulation and conditions. BREEAM gave
substantial impetus for the development of international and transnational systems (including
the GBTool, see paragraph below). In the UK, the standard is well established: all
government buildings have to achieve the assessment level "excellent". In May 2008, the
Code for Sustainable Homes based on the BREEAM scheme “Ecohomes” became
mandatory for new housing in England.
The second world-widely-used system is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design). It was launched in 1998 by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC
http://www.usgbc.org). In 2009, the Green Building Certification Institute (http://www.gbci.org)
assumed responsibility for administering the LEED certification program under which more
than 17,000 commercial projects now await certification. GBCI coordinates the work of global
certification bodies with expertise in validating international standards (ISO-compliance) and
ensures that the third-party certification and verification of buildings under the LEED Rating
System is of high quality. LEED is used in many countries - including Canada, Brazil, Mexico
and India.
LEED and BREEAM offer benefits for international companies, as these systems enable to
assess whole building portfolios in different countries using the same rating system. The
disadvantage is that a high translation effort is required to apply international systems
(raising the costs of consulting for a successful certification).
GBC (Green Building Challenge)
The following initiatives pay more attention to regional conditions, but do not offer marketable
certification schemes, but frameworks to adapt.
In 1996, an international working group called "Green Building Challenge (GBC)" was
founded by the Canadian architects Nils Larsson and Ray Cole. The aim was to define a
common framework for environmental building assessment, to test the criteria on projects in
different countries and to provide a platform for developing national systems.
The so-called “GBTool” was launched as a master tool by the members of the working group
and adapted to region-specific context. This process of optimization and testing was
accompanied by conferences held every three years (the first conference took place in 1998
Final Report 24 31 03 2011