Green Building Certificates – LEED
In the United States and in a number of other countries around the world, LEED - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - certification is the recognized standard for measuring building sustainability. Achieving LEED certification is the best way for you to demonstrate that your building project is truly "green."
The LEED rating system offers four certification levels for new construction -- Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum -- that correspond to the number of credits accrued in five green design categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources and indoor environmental quality. LEED standards cover new commercial construction and major renovation projects, interiors projects and existing building operations. Standards are under development to cover commercial "core & shell" construction, new home construction and neighborhood developments.
Green Building Certificates – BREEAM
BREEAM - BRE Environmental Assessment Method - was established in 1990 as a tool to measure the sustainability of new non-domestic buildings in the UK.
BREEAM sets the standard for best practice in sustainable building design, construction and operation and has become one of the most comprehensive and widely recognised measures of a building's environmental performance.
A BREEAM assessment uses recognised measures of performance, which are set against established benchmarks, to evaluate a building’s specification, design, construction and use. The measures used represent a broad range of categories and criteria from energy to ecology. They include aspects related to energy and water use, the internal environment (health and well-being), pollution, transport, materials, waste, ecology and management processes.
BREEAM addresses wide-ranging environmental and sustainability issues and enables developers, designers and building managers to demonstrate the environmental credentials of their buildings to clients, planners and other initial parties
The stages of assessment in which BREEAM schemes can currently be used to assess the environmental impacts arising as a result of an individual building development (including external site areas) are:
- Design stage (leading to an interim certificate)
- post Construction Stage (leading to a final certificate)
- Operational Stage(BREEAM in use currently in development for international