World green building standard?

This blog has now moved. Please visit Zerochampion.com and update your bookmarks

Mel, who has spruced her site up considerably of late, has lead the way in debating green standards such as BREEAM and LEED (try this post and this one). Here's another thought. Having met an environmental consultant this morning who works internationally I'm wondering whether the idea of a global standard is the way forward. Apparently it's under discussion at the World Green Building Council. Interestingly he sees the changes being made to both LEED and BREEAM driving the standards closer together.

In his words it will get to the stage where different international standards are "90%" similar, so the challenge of making them completely consistent shouldn't be a Herculean one. "It would make life a lot easier," says my expert. And when it's getting to the stage where one of his clients is asking for a LEED certification for a UK building you can see the logic of going global making more and more sense. How about a consistent global post-occupation standard as well?

And, crucially, what should we call this new global standard? I feel a competition coming on. BREED anyone? ZZ Tops?

Comments

[IF Kite]

I think this is possibly the most interesting debate in the field of Building Sustainability at the moment.

Firstly, what is driving the need for a common standard? American CEO's asking for something they are familiar with? If so, does this not smack of American Imperialism?

Which bring me to my point. The CFSH is very South-East centric. Undestandably too as this is where the UK environment is most stressed by buidings. But why would you want to spend thousands of pounds conserving water in places such as Fort William? A better use of financial resources could be found.

Surely a global assessment standard is one of these things that sounds great but when it comes to application throws up all sorts of unwanted anomalies. The devil is in the detail.

[Phil Clark]

You've wound up my American colleague by talking about US imperialism.
I've now asked a colleague to find out all the standards that are out there currently in the world and to try to compare them. Hopefully a useful exercise.

[Matthew]

Great, where is this American colleague? Let me at him! lol ;)

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/SAP.asp

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

[Andrew]

I'd vote for world green building standard. We sometimes work for clients from outside the UK who have no idea what BREEAM is, or more often global clients who just want to be able to compare apples with apples. In fact we have one right now who is going to complete both a BREEAM and LEED assessment on the same buildings.

It's not necessarily Americans asking for a common standard - our Australian, UK and European colleagues and clients do too.

Your point about the devil being in the detail is true, but already in BREEAM for example local geography is considered within some credits (eg water consumption). Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to devise a system that can be relevant globally albeit with the relevant tweaks to reflect local issues?

LEED seems to be gaining prominence because (a) it is extensively used in the US and (b) it doesn't have the same barriers to using it that BREEAM seems to have.

I hope it doesn't become a default global standard though, because in terms of it's coverage it is inferior to other standards like BREEAM and Greenstar.

Right now the different standards that exist (and even versions of the same standards) just serve to confuse.