Chapter Green Building Assessment

CHAPTER 3 LEED AND GREEN BUILDING ASSESSMENT INTRODUCTION During what could be called the ‘early’ green buildings movement in the U.S., that is green buildings designed prior to 1999, buildings were conceptualized by architects and engineers, each design team using their individual interpretations of what could be construed as ‘green’ with respect to the built environment. Although it was understood that these buildings would be resource efficient and environmentally friendly, there were no specific criteria that meant a design passed or failed the test of being green. With the advent of the LEEDTM Green Building Rating System in 1999, this situation changed dramatically with the introduction of a set of criteria that determined not only whether or not the building was green, but what specific shade of green it was. LEEDTM is a registered trademark of the USGBC and provides a rating system with four gradations of points that provide (from highest to lowest) Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Certified ratings. The generic label for LEEDTM and other similar systems and standards in other countries is building assessment system. There are a number of other building assessment systems used in other countries. BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) is a building assessment system used in the United Kingdom and CASBEE (Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency) is a building assessment approach created for Japanese construction that is under development by the Japan Sustainable Building Consortium. A building assessment system provides a methodology for scoring or rating a building’s environmental effects, resource consumption, and health impacts. Clearly this can be a very complicated process because each of these effects has different units of measurements and affects different physical areas. Environmental effects have a wide variety of scales: local, regional, national, and global. Resource impacts are measured in a variety of units: mass, energy, volume, parts per million (ppm), density, and area. Building health can be determined only indirectly by how little chemical and biological materials are likely to be in the air circulating in the building and by the relative health and well-being of the occupants. Portraying this wide variety of information in an informative way is difficult enough but comparing the arrays of data for various building choices is even more complicated. Attaching a rating to the array of information is also not an easy task. Why consider a building assessment standard or rating at all? In general, building assessment systems are created for the purpose of promoting high performance buildings and some, like LEED, are specifically designed to use the market to increase demand. Building assessment systems generally offer a label or plaque indicating the rating the building achieved and it can be affixed to the building as a public statement of the building’s performance. A good rating by a building assessment system should make the building more valuable in the marketplace because it indicates the building will have low operational costs and a healthy interior environment. Competition by owners and developers to achieve high building assessment ratings would have the effect of creating a high quality, high performance building stock. A parallel effect is the success of building assessment systems could also help achieve otherwise difficult to reach political

goals, for example, national requirement related to the Kyoto Protocols on climate change. In designing a building assessment system, the authors are faced with two major choices: using either a single number to describe the building’s overall performance or providing an array of numbers for the same purpose. If a single number is used to assess or rate a building, the assessment system must somehow convert the many different units describing the building’s resource and environmental impacts (energy usage, water consumption, land area footprint, materials and waste quantities) and conditions (building health, built-in recycling systems, deconstructability, percentage of products coming from within the local area) resulting from the building design into a series of numbers that can be added together to produce a single overall score. This is clearly not an easy task and an arbitrary one at best. Clearly the advantage of a single number assessment is its simplicity. And unfortunately its disadvantage is also its simplicity because it arbitrarily combines a wide range of physical units and conditions into a single number. The LEED standard provides a single number for determining how a building as the building’s assessment or rating by assigning points in various categories of impacts and then adding the points to obtain a score. Alternatively a building assessment system can provide an array of numbers or graphs that depict the building’s performance in a number of major areas (for example, environmental loadings, energy and water consumption compared to conventional construction). The advantage of this approach is that the information is more finegrained and provides more detailed information on areas of performance such as energy consumption, global warming, and building health, to name a few. The disadvantage is its complexity, making it moderately difficult to very difficult to compare buildings, depending on the range of factors displayed in the output of the assessment system. Green Building Tool (GB Tool), a system used in the Sustainable Building Challenge series of conferences to compare buildings for their performance, is an example of an assessment methodology that is based on using a relatively large quantity of information to assess the relative merits of a building’s design. This chapter describes the LEED standard in outline detail and provides information about other major building assessment standards or systems used around the world. These include BREEAM, the leading system used in the United Kingdom, CASBEE, the emerging raring system in Japan, and the previously mentioned GB Tool. LEED Structure of LEED LEED is actually a suite of standards developed by member of the USGBC. The best known and only fully implemented LEED standard is LEED version 2.1 for commercial buildings, which has evolved into a highly accepted measure of a green building in the U.S. In addition to LEED 2.1 there are several other LEED standards in various stages of development: LEED-EB: Existing Building Operations (Pilot Version)

LEED-CI: Commercial Interiors (Pilot Version) LEED-Residential (Under development) LEED-Retail (Under development) In addition to the LEED suite of standards, there are also several variants of LEED, for example SPiRiT, a version of LEED adopted by the U.S. Army for its facilities. This and other derivatives are described later in this chapter. Brief History of LEED for Commercial Buildings LEED for commercial buildings was developed by the USGBC in a four year process from 1994 to 1998 (see Table 3.1). The first version, known as LEED 1.0, was issued in 1998 as a beta version. Over thirty buildings in the U.S. were officially scored using LEED 1.0 to obtain a rating which originally was Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze. LEED 2.0 was issued in 2000 and was a very dramatically changed version of the original LEED standard. LEED 2.1 was issued in 2002 and is virtually identical to LEED 2.0 except that it provides for greatly simplified documentation requirements. Future versions of LEED will of course be issued, with LEED 3.0 tentatively scheduled for issuance in 2005.

LEED Version 1.0 2.0 2.1 3.0

Year Issued 1998 2000 2002 2005*

Maximum Points

Buildings Assessed 33

65 65 To be determined

* Tentative date for issue Table 3.1 LEED Versions and Applications

Overview of the LEED Version 2.1 LEED 2.1 is the USGBC standard for commercial buildings and is structured with seven prerequisites and a maximum of 69 points divided into six major categories (see Table 3.2). Prerequisites are conditions that must all be successfully addressed for a building to be eligible to be considered for a LEED rating. The number of points available in each category was established by the developers of LEED and indicates the weight they place on the various major issues addressed by this standard. The allocation of points to each category is arbitrary and based on the judgment of the developers. It is arguable, for example, that Indoor Environmental Quality (15 points maximum) is more important than Materials and Resources (13 points maximum) and three times as important as Water Efficiency (5 points). This indicates some of the pitfalls of a building assessment system that reduces complex factors to a single number. Nonetheless it does provide a logical, rational if somewhat arbitrary approach to producing numerical scores in each category. LEED was developed in an

extensive collaborative process over a total of six years and the outcome of this group thought process is probably fairly on target with respect to weighting the categories.. Consequently in spite of its relative simplicity, it does an excellent job overall of taking complex information and ultimately converting it into a single number. LEED Category 1. Sustainable Sites 2. Water Efficiency 3. Energy and Atmosphere 4. Materials and Resources 5. Indoor Environmental Quality 6. Innovation and Design Process Total Possible Points

Maximum Points 14 5 17 13 15 5 69

Table 3.2 LEED categories and maximum points per category

The total score from LEED, computed from adding up the points earned in each category, results in a building rating (see Table 3.3). Current experience using the LEED 2.1 is that the Platinum and Gold ratings are fairly difficult to achieve and, unlike the typical American attitude, in which the highest score possible is the only one worth achieving, a Silver rating is actually a very good assessment and a noteworthy accomplishment. LEED Rating Platinum Gold Silver Certified No Rating

Points Required 52-69 points 39-51 points 33-38 points 26-32 points 25 or less points

Table 3.3 Points required for LEED ratings An expanded outline version of LEED categories, credits, and prerequisites is shown in Table 3.4. More detailed descriptions of the points available in each of the chapter of Part II of this book, each of which corresponds to one of the LEED categories shown in Table 3.2.

Sustainable Sites: 14 Possible Points Prerequisite 1 Soil and Erosion Control Required Credit 1 Site Selection 1 Credit 2 Urban Redevelopment 1 Credit 3 Brownfields Redevelopment 1 Credit 4.1 Alternative Transportation (Public Transportation Access) 1 Credit 4.2 Alternative Transportation (Bicycle Storage and Changing Rooms) 1 Credit 4.3 Alternative Transportation (Alternative Refueling Stations) 1 Credit 4.4 Alternative Transportation (Parking Capacity) 1 Credit 5.1 Reduced Site Disturbance (Protect or Restore Open Space) 1 Credit 5.2 Reduced Site Disturbance (Development Footprint) 1 Credit 6.1 Stormwater Management (Rate of Quantity) 1 Credit 6.2 Stormwater Management (Treatment0 1 Credit 7.1 Landscape & Exterior Design to Reduce Heat Islands (Non-Roof) 1 Credit 7.2 Landscape & Exterior Design to Reduce Heat Islands (Roof) 1 Credit 8 Light Pollution 1 Water Efficiency: 5 Possible Points Credit 1.1 Water Efficient Landscaping (Reduce by 50%) Credit 1.2 Water Efficient Landscaping ( No Potable Use of No Irrigation) Credit 2 Innovative Wastewater Technology Credit 3.1 Water Use Reduction (20% Reduction Credit 3.2 Water Use Reduction (30% Reduction) Energy & Atmosphere: 17 Possible Points Prerequisite 1 Fundamental Building Systems Commissioning Prerequisite 2 Minimum Energy Performance Prerequisite 3 CFC Reduction in HVAC&R Equipment Credit 1.1 Optimize Energy Performance (20% new/10% existing) Credit 1.2 Optimize Energy Performance (30% new/20% existing) Credit 1.3 Optimize Energy Performance (40% new/30% existing) Credit 1.4 Optimize Energy Performance (50% new/40% existing) Credit 1.5 Optimize Energy Performance (60% new/50% existing) Credit 2.1 Renewable Energy (5%) Credit 2.2 Renewable Energy (10%) Credit 2.3 Renewable Energy (20%) Credit 3 Additional Commissioning Credit 4 Ozone Depletion Credit 5 Measurement & Verification Credit 6 Green power

1 1 1 1 1

Required Required Required 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Materials and Resources: 13 Possible Points Prerequisite 1 Storage & Collection of Recyclables Required Credit 1.1 Building Reuse (Maintain 75% of Existing Shell) 1 Credit 1.2 Building Reuse (Maintain 100% of Shell 1 Credit 1.3 Building Reuse (Maintain 100% of Shell and 50% Non-Shell) 1 Credit 2.1 Construction Waste Management (Divert 50%) 1 Credit 2.2 Construction Waste Management (Divert 75%) 1 Credit 3.1 Resource Reuse (Specify 5%) 1 Credit 3.2 Resource Reuse (Specify 10%) 1 Credit 4.1 Recycled Content (Specify 25%) 1 Credit 4.2 Recycled Content (Specify 50%) 1 Credit 5.1 Local /Regional Materials (20% manufactured locally) 1 Credit 5.2 Local/Regional Materials (of 20% above, 50% harvested locally) 1 Credit 6 Rapidly Renewable Materials 1 Credit 7 Certified Wood 1 Table 3.4 Overview of LEED Categories and Credits

Indoor Environmental Quality: 15 Possible Points Prerequisite 1 Minimum IAQ Performance Prerequisite 2 Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) Control Credit 1 Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Monitoring Credit 2 Increase Ventilation Effectivenenss Credit 3.1 Construction IAQ Management Plan (During Construction) Credit 3.2 Consturction IAQ Management Plan (Before Occupancy) Credit 4.1 Low-Emitting Materials (Adhesives) Credit 4.2 Low-Emitting Materials (Paints) Credit 4.3 Low-Emitting Materials (Carpet) Credit 5 Indoor Chemical and Pollutant Control Credit 6.1 Controllability of Systems (Perimeter) Credit 6.2 Controllability of Systems (Non-Perimeter) Credit 7.1 Thermal Comfort (Comply with ASHRAE 55-1992) Credit 7.2 Thermal Comfort (Permanent Monitoring System) Credit 8.1 Daylight & Views (Daylight 75% or Spaces) Credit 8.2 Daylight & Views (Daylight 90% of Spaces)

Required Required 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Innovation & Design Process: 5 Possible Points Credit 1.1 Innovation in Design (Specific Title) Credit 1.2 Innovation in Design (Specific Title) Credit 1.3 Innovation in Design (Specific Title) Credit 1.4 Innovation in Design (Specific Title) Credit 2 LEEDTM Accredited Professional

1 1 1 1

Project Totals: 69 Total Points Possible Certified: 26-32 Points Silver: 33-38 points

Gold: 36-51 points

Platinum: 52-69 points

Table 3.4 Overview of LEED Categories and Credits (Continued)

THE LEED CERTIFICATION PROCESS The decision to submit a building for LEED certification is generally made by the owner with input from the design team. This generally occurs prior to the design phase of the construction process but can occur even after construction has been initiated. For a building to be officially certified by the USGBC, the owner or architect must notify the USGBC of the intent to have the building certified, fill out the necessary USGBC paperwork, and pay a registration fee. For a building to be certified, the project team must insure that the intent of the design with respect to LEED was met and submit evidence that the building has attained the points claimed by the building team. Under LEED 2.0, documenting that a building had attained a specific credit was a very time intensive and laborious process. For example, providing evidence that the building contains substantial local materials (products within a 500-mile radius of the building site) requires a list of these materials, their manufacturing or final assembly location, and the cost of the materials and this evidence had to be submitted to the USGBC. Fortunately the recent LEED 2.1 update issued in 2002 relaxes some of the documentation requirements and greatly reduces the time needed to produce documentation for certification. LEED version 2.1 uses LEED Letter Templates or forms that provide for the design and construction professionals to certify that each of the points claimed has in fact been achieved. The result is a greatly reduced cost to carry out the LEED documentation process.

Upon receipt of the documentation from the building team, the USGBC examines the submissions and issues a building plaque specifying the LEED rating allowed for the specific building. The plaque provides visible evidence that the building is certified as a high performance building with greatly reduced environmental loadings and resource consumption. The following paragraphs describe the LEED certification process in more detail. Eligibility For the purpose of LEED, commercial buildings, as defined by standard building codes are eligible for certification under LEED 2.1. Commercial occupancies include—but are not limited to—offices, retail and service establishments, institutional buildings (e.g., libraries, schools, museums, churches, etc.), hotels, and residential buildings of four or more habitable stories. If the application of LEED for a unique building type is questionable, the USGBC encourages the project team to tally a potential point total using the checklist in the LEED Rating System document. The project is a viable candidate for LEED Certification if it can meet all prerequisites and achieve a minimum of 26 points. Registration The first step toward earning LEED 2.1 Certification is project registration. Registering during the early phases of project design maximizes the potential for achieving certification. Registration is an important step that establishes contact with the USGBC and provides access to essential information, software tools and communications. Upon registration, project contacts receive an orientation letter and access to resources that explain and facilitate the formal LEED certification process. This includes access to the LEED 2.1 Letter Templates that are needed for the project team to certify that the claimed LEED points have been in fact attained. LEED 2.1 Letter Templates LEED 2.1 uses a device called a Letter Template to make it relatively easy for the project team to provide data on the project to the USGBC for its certification review. For example for Sustainable Site Credit 5, Reduced Site Disturbance, the Civil Engineer or responsible party must submit the signed corresponding Letter Template for this Credit, affirming that site disturbance (including earthwork and clearing of vegetation) has been limited to 40 feet beyond the building perimeter, 5 feet beyond primary roadway curbs, walk ways and main utility branch trenches, and 25 feet beyond constructed areas with permeable surfaces. Access to similar LEED 2.1 Letter Templates for each Credit are provided to the project team upon registration of the project. Application Once a project is registered, the project design team begins to prepare documentation and calculations to satisfy the prerequisite and credit submittal requirements. It is helpful to have a LEED Accredited Professional as the project contact and team member responsible for shepherding the certification process. A LEED Accredited Professional is

a building professional who has passed the USGBC test for accreditation and who is especially trained in the process for acquiring LEED certification.. Projects must comply with the criteria outlined in the LEED version applicable at the time of project registration. To streamline the application process, required documentation should be gathered throughout the design and construction process. Documentation should be compiled in one three-ring binder following the LEED 2.1 Letter Templates provided upon registration. A complete application will include the following: • an overall project narrative; • the LEED Project Scorecard indicating projected prerequisites and credits and the anticipated total score for the project; and • the LEED Letter Template for each prerequisite and credit, separated by tabs. Credit Interpretation Requests In some cases, project teams may encounter questions about meeting the requirements of a LEED prerequisite or credit on a specific project. The USGBC has a uniform review process for registered project inquiries, called credit interpretation requests, to ensure that rulings are consistent and made available to future projects. The recommended procedure for reviewing credit questions is outlined below: • Consult this book, the USGBC website, or the LEED Reference Guide for a detailed description of the credit intent and requirements. • Review the intent of the credit or prerequisite in question to self-evaluate whether the project meets this intent. • Review the LEED Credit Interpretations Rulings (CIR) page on the USGBC website for previously logged CIRs on relevant credits. All LEED project contacts have access to this page. If a similar credit interpretation has not been logged, submit a new credit interpretation request using the online form. The inquiry should be succinct with emphasis on the intent of the prerequisite or credit. Relevant project details may be described to support the project team's interpretation of the credit or prerequisite. Certification To earn LEED Certification, the applicant project must satisfy all of the prerequisites and a minimum number of points to attain the LEED rating levels as listed in Table 3.2. The certification review process includes the following: • Application Submittal: The project team submits two copies of the project application and the corresponding fee to the LEED Certification Manager. Please contact the LEED certification manager for complete instructions. •

Administrative Review: An administrative compliance review is completed within one week from the USGBC's receipt of the application. Each credit is reviewed for compliance and completeness. If the documentation is insufficient, the project contact is notified of the deficiencies. The technical review begins when the issues raised by the administrative review are resolved.

•

Technical Review: Within two weeks of administrative approval, the USGBC issues a Preliminary LEED Review document noting points earned, pending and rejected. The project team has 30 days from the receipt of the preliminary review to provide corrections and/or additions as a supplementary submittal to the application. The USGBC conducts a Final LEED Review of the application within 30 days of receiving the resubmittal and recommends a final application score to the LEED Steering Committee. The LEED Steering Committee accepts or rejects the recommended final application score within two weeks of receipt and notifies the project contact of the LEED Certification.

•

Award: Upon notification of the LEED Certification, the project team has 30 days to accept or appeal the awarded certification. Upon the project’s acceptance, or if it has not appealed the rating within 30 days, the LEED Certification is final. The project may then be referred to as a LEED Certified Green Building. The USGBC presents the project team with a certificate and a metal LEED plaque indicating the certification level.

Fees for Registration and Certification The current fees charged by the USGBC for LEED Certification are indicated in Table 3.5 75,000 to 300,000 More than 300,000 Square Feet Square Feet Based on Square Feet Fixed Rate Registration Members $750.00 $0.01 per Square Foot $3,000.00 Non-Members $950.00 $0.0125 per Square $3,750 Foot Certification Members $1,500.00 $.02 per Square Foot $6,000.00 Non-Members $1,8750.00 $0.025 per Square Foot $7,500.00 Table 3.5 Current USGBC Fee Structure for LEED Registration and Certification Item

Less than 75,000 Square Feet Fixed Rate

VARIANTS OF LEED One of the factors propelling the rapid growth in green buildings in the U.S. has been the adoption of LEED as the standard for construction by local governments. Some municipalities or counties around the U.S. (Oakland, California and Hennepin County, Minnesota) were already developing standards similar to LEED and these have evolved into programs that are distinctly different from LEED but also have a strong resemblance to the basic LEED approach. Several state and local governments have developed their own building assessment systems based on LEED, generally creating assessment systems that use the LEED structure but that result in stricter standards.. Examples are the Portland LEED, the Seattle LEED Supplements, San José LEED, California LEED, and the Triangle Region (North Carolina) High Performance Guidelines. In general these

variants of LEED make reference to local standards and codes when they are more stringent than those referenced in LEED, clarify some of the LEED requirements, insert local references where appropriate, and focus LEED on the cultural, economic, and environmental conditions in the specific area. The U.S. Army has mandated Sustainable Design and Development (SDD) be the standard for all new Army facilities. The U.S. Army also has developed a variant of LEED known as SPiRiT that focuses on the conditions encountered on military bases and which serves as a checklist and scoring system for implementing SDD. SPiRiT ratings are platinum, gold, silver, and bronze and based on 100 points (see Table 3.6). A bronze rating is the minimum target score and is attainable while gold and platinum projects can be nominated as Army Sustainable Showcase Military Construction Projects. The categories used in SPiRiT and a brief description of each area covered is shown in table 3.7. . In addition to the categories covered in LEED, SPiRiT adds categories for the building delivery process and how well the facility addresses present and future missions.

Points 75-100 50-74 35-49 25-34 Table 3.6 SPiRiT Scoring

Rating SPiRiT Points SPiRiT Gold SPiRiT Silver SPiRiT Bronze

Sustainable Sites: 20 pts Erosion, Sedimentation, and Water Quality Control, Site Selection, Installation/Base Redevelopment, Brownfield Redevelopment, Alternative Transportation, Reduced Site Disturbance, Storm Water Management, Landscape and Exterior Design to Reduce Heat Islands, Light Pollution Reduction, Optimize Site Features, Facility Impact, Site Ecology Water Efficiency: 5 pts Water Efficient Landscaping, Innovative Wastewater Technologies, Water Use Reduction Energy and Atmosphere: 28 pts Fundamental Building Systems Commissioning, Minimum Energy Performance, CFC Reduction in HVAC&R Equipment, Reduce ozone depletion, Optimize Energy Performance, Renewable Energy, Additional Commissioning, Measurement and Verification, Green Power, Distributed Generation Materials and Resources: 13 pts Storage & Collection of Recyclables, Building Reuse, Construction Waste Management, Resource Reuse, Recycled Content, Local/Regional Materials, Rapidly Renewable Materials Indoor Environmental Quality: 17 pts Minimum IAQ Performance, Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) Control, IAQ Monitoring, Increase Ventilation Effectiveness, Construction IAQ Management Plan, Low-Emitting Materials, Indoor Chemical and Pollutant Source Control, Controllability of Systems, Thermal Comfort, Daylight and Views, Acoustic Environment /Noise Control, Facility In-Use IAQ Management Plan Facility Delivery Process: 7 pts Holistic Delivery of Facility: Encourage a facility delivery process that actively engages all stakeholders in the design process to deliver a facility that meets all functional requirements while effectively optimizing tradeoffs among sustainability, first costs, life cycle costs and mission requirements Current Mission: 6 pts Design for operation and maintenance. Provide amenities for soldier and workforce productivity and retention Future Mission: 4 pts Assess functional life of facility and supporting systems. Design for adaptation, renewal and future uses TOTAL 100 pts Table 3.7 Categories, Themes, and Points Used in the U.S. Army Variant of LEED Known as SPiRiT.

BREEAM (United Kingdom) BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) is by far the oldest building assessment system and until the advent of LEED, easily the most successful system. Developed in 1988 by the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the national building research organization of the UK, it was initially created to help transform the construction of office buildings to high performance standards. BREEAM has been a highly successful standard for building assessment and it has been adopted in Canada, and several European and Asian countries. BREEAM assesses the performance of buildings in the following areas: • management: overall management policy, commissioning site management and procedural issues • energy use: operational energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) issues • health and well-being: indoor and external issues affecting health and well-being • pollution: air and water pollution issues • transport: transport-related CO2 and location-related factors • land use: greenfield and brownfield sites • ecology: ecological value conservation and enhancement of the site • materials: environmental implication of building materials, including life-cycle impacts • water: consumption and water efficiency Credits are awarded in each area according to performance. A set of environmental weightings then enables the credits to be added together to produce a single overall score. The building is then rated on a scale of PASS, GOOD, VERY GOOD or EXCELLENT, and a certificate is awarded that can be used for promotional purposes. BREEAM covers primarily offices, homes, and industrial units with assessment methods for each general type of building: BREEAM Office version 2002, BREEAM/New Industrial Units, and a BREEAM EcoHomes. In 2003 a new version, BREEAM/Retail, will be issued to address the design, construction, and operation of retail stores. CASBEE (Japan) The Japan Sustainable Building Consortium, comprised of academic, industrial, and government entities, is cooperating to develop a building assessment system, CASBEE, designed specifically for Japan and Japanese cultural, social, and political conditions. CASBEE (Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency) is actually a suite of assessment tools for the various phases of the building being evaluated: planning, design, completion, operation, renovation(see Table 3.8 and Table 3.9).

Name Tool-0 Tool-1 Tool-2 Tool-3

Title Pre-Design Tool Design for Environment Tool Eco-labeling Tool Sustainable Operation and Renovation Tool

Applicable Phases Planning, design Design, completion Completion, operation Operation, renovation

Table 3.8 CASBEE Assessment Tools and Applicable Phases The key concept in CASBEE is Building Environmental Efficiency or BEE which is an attempt to describe the ecoefficiency of the building. The World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBSCD) defines ecoffiency as maximizing economic value while minimizing their environmental impacts : Value of Products or Services Ecoefficency = Environmental Loadings for Products or Services BEE is simply a modification of the concept of ecoefficiency for application to buildings:: BEE=

Building Environmental Quality & Performance Building Environmental Loadings

The Building Environmental Quality and Performance is described as the amenities provided for building users and consists of several quantities: Q1: Indoor environment Q2: Quality of service Q3: Outdoor environment on site. Similarly, the Building Environmental Loadings consist of several different categories: L1: Energy L2: Resources and materials L3: Off-site environment

Tool-0 Pre-Design Assessment Tool For use by owners and planners for identifying the project context, selecting the proper site and determining the basic impact of the project. Tool-1: DfE (Design for the Environment) Tool A simple check system for designers and engineers to use in improving the Building Environmental Efficiency (BEE) during the design phase. Tool-2: Eco-Labelling Tool Used to rate the building in terms of BEE after construction and to determine the basic property of the labeled building in the property market. Tool-3: Sustainable Operation and Renovation Tool For use in informing building owners and managers how to improve the BEE of their building during the operation of the building. Table 3.9 Description of CASBEE Tools The BEE rating is a number, generally in the range of 0.5 to 3, that corresponds to a building class, from class S (highest for BEE of 3.0 or higher) to classes A (BEE of 1.5 to 3.0), B+ (BEE of 1.0 to 1.5), B- (BEE of 0.5 to 1.0) and C ( BEE less than 0.5). CASBEE and its various tools are still under development and it remains to be seen how it will be accepted in the Japanese marketplace as a tool for transforming the building stock to high performance standards. GB Tool GB Tool is a very comprehensive and sophisticated building assessment development that was developed for the biannual international Green Building Challenge (GBC) that has been held three times to-date in 1998 (Paris), 2000 (Maastricht), and 2002 (Oslo) with the 2004 event scheduled for Japan. In the latest meeting in Oslo, national teams from 14 countries submitted entries to demonstrate the art and science of green buildings in their countries. GB Tool provides a standard basis of comparison for the wide range of buildings being compared in Green Building Challenge. It requires a comprehensive set of information not only on the building being assessed, but also for a benchmark building for use in comparing how well the green building performs compared to the norm. GB Tool requires the group using it to establish benchmark values and weights for the various impacts. GB Tool is implemented in the form of a sophisticated Excel spreadsheet that can be downloaded from the website of the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (iisBE). GB Tool’s output provides an assessment of the building in four different categories: Resource Consumption, Environmental Loadings; Indoor Environmental Quality; Service Quality; Economics; Management; Commuting Transport

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The high performance building movement worldwide is being propelled by the success of building assessment methods, in particular, LEED in the U.S. and BREEAM in the U.K. Both methods take complex arrays of numerical and non-numerical data and provide a score that indicates the performance of a building according to the scoring and weighting system built into the method. LEED 2.1 is the present version of the USGBC assessment standard for commercial buildings and it is actually being applied to a wide range of other types of public and private buildings, from gymnasiums to schools. Variants of LEED such as the U.S. Army’s SPiRiT and Portland LEED mark a trend toward customization of LEED to focus it more clearly on the user’s criteria and the specific bioregion in which the building is located. New versions of LEED to address residential and retail construction as well as to deal with renovations and existing buildings are being produced to provide a better match of the assessment method to the building situation.

REFERENCES CASBEE LEED Green Building Rating System 2.1, U.S. Green Building Council, Washington, DC, November 2002 (Revised 16 January 2003) RESOURCES BREEAM http://products.bre.co.uk/breeam/ The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is the national building research organization of the United Kingdom. The Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) was developed by BRE and paved the way for later building assessment methods such as LEED. International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE) http://www.iisbe.org iiSBE is an international non-profit organization whose overall aim is to actively facilitate and promote the adoption of policies, methods and tools to accelerate the movement towards a global sustainable built environment. The latest version of GB Tool can be downloaded from their website. LEED 2.1 Standard http://www.usgbc.org/LEED The LEED standard has become the de facto high performance building standard in the U.S. and a copy of the standard can be downloaded at the USGBC website. Portland LEED http://www.sustainableportland.org/portland_leed.pdf Portland LEED was the first local version of the LEED standard approved by the USGBC and it tailors the national standard to local building and development requirements while maintaining third party verification and official certification by the USGBC. SPiRit: http://www.cecer.army.mil/SustDesign/SPiRiT.cfm

SPiRiT is a derivative or variant of LEED developed by the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Laboratory. SPiRiT provides guidance to support sustainable design and development principles for Army installation planning decisions and infrastructure projects. It is intended to be used throughout the design process to guide the project towards a sustainable solution as well as to score and rate the resulting facility.