The world’s leading green building organisations have reached agreement to adopt a common language for the carbon footprinting of buildings.

Earlier this year, an alliance of green building councils including the US and UK Green Buildings Councils and the BRE Trust, which owns BREEAM, agreed to develop a common carbon metric.

The new common carbon metric has been recognised by the UNEP Sustainable Building and Climate Initiative and the Sustainable Building Alliance, a non-profit network of standard setting organisations, national building research centres and key property industry and construction organisations.

Green building rating tools will now pilot the new metric and it will be made available to groups and organisations promoting green and sustainable development.

“The significance of this agreement should not be underestimated,” says Tony Arnel, chair of the World Green Building Council. “The coming together of so many leading green building organisations is unprecedented.”

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), buildings account for around 40% of the world’s energy use and a third of greenhouse gas emissions, but represent one of the most cost-effective sectors for improvement.

The EU, meanwhile, is considering introducing energy efficiency standards for all public sector buildings from 2018, according to press reports.

It is expected that the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, which will be unveiled shortly, will mandate improvements to the energy efficiency of buildings starting with those in the public sector.

For further information:
www.bre.co.uk/
www.usgbc.org/
www.ukgbc.org/
www.unepsbci.org/
www.sballiance.org/
www.ipcc.ch/

Related stories:
US green building sector to contribute $554 billion to economy by 2013 (13-Nov)
UK and France to develop common rating tool for buildings (24-Jun)
Big three agree to align green building ratings (4-Mar)

16 November 2009