The Green Building Initiative (GBI) has released its proposed green building standard, GBI Proposed American National Standard 01-2008P: Green Building Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings, for public comment.
The proposed standard is based on the Green Globes environmental assessment and rating system and is available for public comment through Monday, June 9, 2008, via the GBI Web site.
The proposed standard incorporates new elements developed by the GBI American National Standards Institute (ANSI) technical committee and subcommittees, which include representatives from various organizations, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. General Services Administration, and the American Institute of Architects.
New elements of the proposed standard include:
* The Green Globes life-cycle assessment (LCA) credit calculator for building assemblies, which incorporates LCA into the system. While the current version of Green Globes includes education credits encouraging design teams to use LCA as part of their materials decision-making process, the proposed standard includes a performance path based on software that provides instant LCA results for hundreds of common building assemblies.
* The Green Globes water-consumption calculator, which allows users to project water consumption of new buildings based on their designs.
* A change to the energy section, whereby the standard uses carbon dioxide as the basis for calculating the performance path instead of relying solely on projecting the total amount of energy consumed.
* The requirement to achieve a minimum number of points in each of the system's seven areas of assessment. Green Globes previously required a 35 percent minimum to achieve a rating, with no set number of points in each category. This requirement will change under the proposed standard, where users will have to meet a minimum in each environmental area. As with the current version of Green Globes, a building cannot earn recognition until a GBI-authorized, third-party assessor confirms the final rating.
Managers can apply the standard to a range of building types, including office, health care, schools, universities, and retail.
Parties interested in commenting can complete the stakeholder registration form available on the GBI’s Web site. They then can download a copy of the proposed standard and public review form. They also will be invited to review the new Green Globes calculators the GBI has introduced with the proposed standard.
Following the period of public review, the ANSI technical committee will evaluate comments received and address any need for further research and revisions to the proposed standard. For more information about the Green Globes environmental assessment and rating system or the GBI, visit www.thegbi.org.
