by Brianna Crandall — October 14, 2015—The Green Building Initiative (GBI) is asking for widespread input on its revised Green Globes green building standard, whether or not participants have worked on a Green Globes project. Nearly 1000 buildings are Green Globes certified in the United States today, notes GBI.
The revised ANSI/GBI 01-2010: Green Building Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings, which forms the basis for the current version of Green Globes for New Construction, is now available on GBI’s Web site along with a public comment form on GBI’s ANSI Web page. The public comment period will run through Monday, October 26, 2015.
Widespread input
GBI says it is important for the continued success of the broader green building industry that as many stakeholders as possible comment on the revised standard whether or not they have worked on a Green Globes project. According to the organization, many are concerned that the current collaboration on the development of future versions of ASHRAE Standard 189.1, the IgCC and LEED, relying on ASHRAE’s technical expertise, risks further stifling innovation and creativity in green building. GBI says an innovative new Green Globes Standard may be “the best weapon against the further slowing of the already stalling larger domestic green building market.”
Work on the revision began in 2014 and has included input from nearly 100 subject matter experts in the green building community through more than 70 public meetings and calls conducted as part of GBI’s American National Standard Institute (ANSI) procedures, according to the organization.
Green Globes flexibility
A good example of the Green Globes tradition of flexibility is the use of “non-applicables.” Users can indicate criteria that are not applicable to a building or project. For instance, if optional features (e.g., cooling towers) are not included in the project scope, then those criteria could be marked non-applicable. This is key because a building is only in compliance with the standard and can only achieve Green Globes certification if it achieves at least 35 percent of “applicable” points out of 1000 possible points.
The revised standard sets an additional requirement that a building must achieve at least 20 percent of applicable points within each of the six environmental assessment areas.
Revisions
In this revision, several changes were made to 1000 point distributions to reflect the relative perceived importance or “weight” of the criteria within areas. For example, the Energy assessment area continues to hold the highest number of possible points, indicating its critical importance. The Water assessment area’s point allocation has also been raised significantly to highlight the vital importance of water efficiency. The new point distribution as proposed “weights” the assessment areas as follows: Project Management (100 points), Site (150 points), Energy (260 points), Water (190 points), Materials (150 points), and Indoor Environment (150 points).
The revised standard, consistent with the 2010 version, does not make specific criteria mandatory (i.e., there are no mandatory points).
Additional weighting occurs within each assessment area to encourage pursuit of criteria considered to be most important. For example, Section 9.1 on Indoor Domestic Plumbing has 32 possible points out of the Water assessment area’s total 190 points, and points are allocated to encourage use of indoor plumbing fixtures more efficient than the base efficiency requirements. This ensures that Green Globes buildings prioritize indoor water efficiency. Other sections in the Water assessment area also have high weightings, including Cooling Towers (31 points), Alternate Sources of Water (28 points), Metering (28 points), and Irrigation (27 points).
With respect to the future, GBI is moving to a continuous maintenance process (i.e., not every five years or the like), where proposals for change can be continually considered by the consensus body to insure continued innovation in the Green Globes Standard that responds to the market.
