37º IAHS World Congress on Housing: - Universidad de Cantabria

XXXVII <strong>IAHS</strong><strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> on HousingOctober 26 – 29, 2010, Santander, SpainCODE: 280A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE GREEN BUILDINGASSESSMENT SYSTEMS BETWEEN U.S. AND CHINAQian SHI, Chao XIAO, Xi GAOSchool of Economics and Management,Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, P.R.China,qianshi@mail.tongji.edu.cnKeywords: Green Building, Sustainable Construction, Evaluation Standard, Assessment system.AbstractWith the development of science and technology, human society has created unprecedentedmaterial and spiritual civilization. On the other hand, it has also caused serious pollution tothe natural environment and irreversible damages to the ecological resources. The buildingactivity is one of the most influential activities. Therefore, as all the world is promoting andimplementing a transition from the traditional resource-based development model to asustainable development model, the introduction of the concept of sustainable developmentinto the field of housing construction and the formation of the concept of green building willbecome the dominant trend in the future. Green Building Evaluation System is an effectivetool for the promotion of Green Building. Therefore, researchers all over the world havedeveloped a couple of appropriate evaluation standards, such as LEED of the United States,BREEAM of Britain, LNB of German, CASBEE of Japan, jointly developed SBTool and soforth. The milestones of the development of green building evaluation system in MainlandChina are the Olympic Green Building Rating System which is established in 2002 and theEvaluation standard of Green Building (ESGB, GB/T50378-2006) issued in 2006. In view ofthe geographical location and characteristics, China and the United States are quite similar.Therefore, the comparison between the Green Building Evaluation Systems of these twocountries based on the combination of two countries’ economic situation, resource utilization,and other differences, can help us to play up strengths and avoid weakness. Meanwhile, thiscomparison can make us have a new awareness and targeted improvements to China’s GreenBuilding Evaluation System as well.This thesis, from the perspective of housing construction, focused on the comparative analysisof the United States LEED and China’s Green Building Assessment Standard according totheir evaluating indicators, evaluating mechanisms and evaluating method. In addition,the authors also put forward some improvement suggestion for further study in order tofacilitate its application in the housing construction industry.37º <strong>IAHS</strong> <strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> On Housing Science 162