Green Star: The Revolution is Building

Romilly Madew, Chief Executive

Green Building Council of Australia

A ‘revolution’ – from the Latin ‘revolutio’, meaning a turn-around – is a fundamental change that takes place in a relatively short period of time.

This is exactly what Green Star Revolution aims to achieve.

Last year, the Green Building Council of Australia undertook a comprehensive review of Green Star, surveying our members and stakeholders, assessing submissions made to the Technical Assurance Committee and undertaking market research projects.

We asked the industry to tell us how Green Star could improve.

The industry talked and we listened.

The result is our new blueprint for Green Star, which will streamline certification, ensure greater transparency, consistency and rigour, and deliver the next generation of Green Star rating tools.

Green Star Revolution is the GBCA’s most ambitious undertaking, and aims to make Green Star simpler, faster, more consistent and more cost-effective.

The many projects we are now tackling include investigating systemic conditional requirements for greenhouse gas emissions and water efficiency for each star level, and a review of environmental weightings to improve transparency.

The Green Star assessment process will be further simplified.  Project teams can expect more support, as we introduce standard templates and examples of successful submissions to guide project teams through the certification process.

The first two projects designed to decrease costs and increase certainty of Green Star certification have already been announced.

For example, assessment of Green Star Innovation credits has moved from Round 2 to Round 1.  Until now, Innovation credits were assessed during Round 2.  Project teams told us that this created uncertainty as to whether they would achieve the Innovation points.

By moving the assessment of Innovation credits to Round 1, project teams will have more time to provide additional information to substantiate Innovation claims.  This new process will also reduce the costs associated with Innovation claims, as project teams will no longer need to include buffer credits just in case they aren’t awarded the Innovation points.

The GBCA is also introducing an additional free Credit Interpretation Request (CIR) for area definitions.  CIRs are submitted to the GBCA when a project team wishes to advocate for an alternative yet equivalent method of meeting the aims of a Green Star credit.

Project teams often require a CIR to define how different space types within their projects are to be addressed. By providing a free area definition CIR at the start of each project, the GBCA will provide extra certainly when determining which spaces are relevant to each credit.

While these changes may seem small, the feedback we’ve already received from industry suggests they will make a big difference to how project teams manage their Green Star submissions.

We expect our other projects to transform Australia’s property and construction industry – none more so than our suite of innovative new rating tools.  Among those are: Green Star – Public Building able to rate everything from law courts to libraries; Green Star – Custom for any project outside the scope of existing Green Star rating tools; and Green Star – Communities which will support best practice planning, design and construction of Australia’s precincts, communities and cities.

Perhaps the project which will have the greatest impact on the property and construction industry will be the development of the Green Star – Performance tool, which turns our attention to the 98 per cent of our buildings already in operation.

Green Star – Performance will provide building owners with a set of benchmarks across a range of environmental impacts, tenants with a rating they can trust and governments with an industry-leading tool able to transform their policies into actions. 

The future is here – and it is revolutionary.  We want industry to work with us to build the Green Star Revolution.  I encourage you to find out more about the Green Star Revolution project and what it means for your organisation.

Visit:

www.gbca.org.au/revolution

Romilly Madew leads Australia's peak industry association responsible for transforming the built environment to design, construct and operate sustainably. Romilly is an experienced green building, sustainable communities and cities advocate.