commentGreen Globes Announces Life-Cycle Assessment Tool for Rating Systems
The Green Building Initiative (GBI) announced in February 2007 that it has completed work on a software tool that supports environmental design choices based on life-cycle assessment (LCA)—without requiring designers to know much about LCA. Modeled on the Building Research Establishment’s (BRE) Green Guide to Specification, which has been used in the U.K. for over a decade, GBI’s new software contains a library of 400 commercial and residential building assemblies that have been rated using LCA software. Designers can select assemblies from that library and earn points based on the LCA results for those assemblies. “We’re trying to make LCA data more accessible and practical to use,” noted GBI executive director Ward Hubbell.
The software has now been submitted to GBI’s Technical Committee for review, and to determine exactly how the points will be earned in GBI’s Green Globes environmental assessment and rating system. Green Globes currently allows up to 40 points, out of 1,000 total, for the use of LCA tools in the design process, regardless of what decisions result from that use. GBI also intends for the new software to be used in a forthcoming online version of the National Association of Home Builders’ Model Green Home Building Guidelines.
The tool was developed for GBI by Morrison Hershfield Group, Inc., in association with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Sustainable Building Research and the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute, whose Environmental Impact Estimator (EIE) software was used to rate the assemblies.
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This same approach has been proposed for the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED Rating System in a report from a working group of the ad hoc “LCA into LEED” initiative that was launched in September 2004. The similarity is no coincidence, as this approach was championed by Wayne Trusty, president of Athena, who chaired that working group and also chairs GBI’s Technical Committee. USGBC recently announced plans to pursue this approach for LEED and has contracted with LCA expert Greg Norris of Sylvatica to help it implement an assemblies-based approach.
The Green Globes use of this LCA software will differ from BRE’s Green Guide to Specification and from LEED’s likely approach in at least one important respect, according to Trusty. Like other LCA software, Athena provides a score in each of a range of impact categories. Athena’s five categories are embodied energy, greenhouse gases, toxic releases to air, toxic releases to water, and solid waste.
Rather than combining LCA scores across the five impact categories using some type of weighting so that each assembly can be assigned a single score, Green Globes will attribute points to each assembly in each impact category, Trusty explains. Thus even an assembly that scores poorly in several areas can contribute points in others. This approach serves a valuable educational function, Trusty suggests, because it “lets the design team see where they’re earning their points.”
No timetable has been proposed for when Green Globes might be updated to incorporate this LCA tool: “That’s in the hands of the ANSI committee,” noted Hubbell, referring to the technical committee responsible for GBI’s consensus process, which complies with American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards.
However, GBI has authorized Athena to post a non-Green Globes version of the software on Athena’s website for free public access. Thanks to additional funding from several Canadian sources, “the generic tool should be made available in April or May [of 2007],” Trusty predicted. Regardless of the details, the adoption of this approach for both Green Globes and LEED signals a major leap forward in what will likely be an ongoing integration of LCA into rating systems. Over time, this process should strengthen the link between rating system scores and actual environmental benefits.
For more information:
Ward Hubbell, Executive Director
Green Building Initiative
Portland, Oregon
877-424-4241
www.thegbi.orgTom Dietsche, Research Manager
U.S. Green Building Council
Washington, D.C.
202-828-7422
www.usgbc.org
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