Global standards
Green buildings in the US have two sets of standards to choose from: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) set by the US Green Building Council, or Green Globes developed by the Green Building Initiative. The former is widely followed not just in the US, but also in other parts of the world. LEED ranks buildings based on their performance in five areas: site planning, waste management, energy management, material use and indoor air quality.
Australia follows the Green Star rating which evaluates projects against eight environmental impact categories: management, energy, water, indoor environmental quality, transport, material, emissions, and innovations.
The UK extensively follows the Building Research Establishment's Environmental Assessment Method, which also gets updated annually. Points are awarded on these categories: management, health and wellbeing, energy, water; materials, land use, ecology and pollution.
Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE) is followed in Japan. It is a novel concept for assessment that distinguishes environmental load from the quality of building performance. CASBEE then relates the two aspects and results are presented as a measure of eco-efficiency or building environmental efficiency. The results are plotted on a graph, with environmental load on one axis and quality on the other
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