Energy & Environmental Rating Systems for Measuring Green Building Performances

Abstract

Under current energy and environmental concerns, buildings are targeted as problems required immediatesolutions. Generally, buildings consume plenty of resources, produce unwanted wastes, and sometimes demoteIndoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). Given these negative impacts, Green Building was introduced as ananswer to mitigate the current energy and environmental problems. Architects, engineers, and practitionersquickly adopt this green building idea but the direction was both diversified and unclear. At that time, proclaimedgreen building seems to be just promise lacking of solid evidences. Energy & Environmental rating systemwas initially proposed as a campaign attempting to quantify green buildings. Different measures were takenand then weighted for scoring purposes. Using these scores, green buildings are possible to be quantifiedand ranked afterward. In this review article, not only the rating systems, i.e. BREEAM, Green Star, and GreenGlobe, TEEAM, will be overviewed, but also LEED, the most dominating system in US, will be discussedin detail. The simplicity by having six sustainability measures including sustainable site, water efficiency,energy and atmosphere, material and resources, IEQ, and innovation in design, are the key success of LEEDrating system. Moreover, the flexibility of having different compliance methods and scoring options makes manydesigners are in favor of this approach. By using performance-base compliance method, designers can comparetheir design against the base case for winning the higher performances such as energy cost. The score willthen be interpolated and given by exceeding performances. In order to obtain high scores, practices andtechnologies that are acknowledged by rating systems, particularly LEED, should be systematically strategized.Xeriscaping, Green Roof, Geothermal Cooling, Displacement Ventilation, and Demand Control Ventilation, arethe examples of such technologies that greatly promote the scores across multiple categories. By reviewingcompositions, mechanism, practice, and technologies of green building rating systems, this article should bea useful source for practitioners who will or already involve in any green building project and looking forwardto quantify their buildings with any rating system in the near future.