4 indicators that the green building movement is shifting into the mainstream: - Answers -the majority
of firms engaged in design and construction expected that over 60% of their world would be in green
building by 2015
-Arabs first Forum for Sustainable Communities
-US continued evolution of thinking about how to best achieve high standards of efficiency in the built
environment while at the same time promoting human health and protecting ecological systems.
-Apple and Google have announced major projects that indicate their industry is embracing high
performance green building.
BREEAM (United Kingdom) - Answers Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment
Method
CASBEE ( In Japan) - Answers Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency
Green Star - Answers Australia
Changing conditions affecting the built environment in significant ways - Answers -increased demand for
buildings that are resource efficient
-building location is a key factor in reducing energy consumption because transportation energy can
amount to two times the operational energy of the building.
2030 Challenge - Answers goal is to achieve dramatic reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions of the
built environment by changing the way buildings and developments are planned, designed, and
constructed.
High performance building projects are now addressing three emerging challenges - Answers -demand
for high efficiency buildings
-consideration of building location to minimize transportation energy
-the challenges of climate change
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) - Answers allows the quantification of the environmental impacts of design
decisions that span the entire life of the project.
Green Building - Answers refers to the quality and characteristics of the actual structure created using
the principles and methodologies of sustainable construction.
High performance building - Answers uses whole building design to achieve energy, economic, and
environmental performance that is substantially better than standard practice
, whole building design or integrated design. - Answers considers site, energy, materials, indoor air
quality, acoustics, and natural resources as well as there interrelation with one another.
Sustainable Land - Answers based on the principle that land, particularly undeveloped, natural, or
agricultural land is a precious, finite, resource and its development should be minimized.
Water Issues - Answers The availability of potable water is the limiting factor for development and
construction in many areas of the world
Green Buildings are achieving rapid penetration in the US construction market for three primary
reasons. - Answers -sustainable construction provides an ethical and practical response to issues of
environmental impact and resource consumption.
-Green building virtually always makes economic sense on an LLC basis, although they may be more
expensive on a capital, or first-cost basis.
-sustainable design acknowledges the potential effect of the building, including its operation, on the
health of its human occupants.
GGGC - Answers The Pennsylvania Governors Green Government Council
Transparency - Answers when associated with the green building movement, is concerned with open
provision of information about (1) building energy and water performance and (2) the impacts of the
materials and products that compose the building.
HDP - Answers reports on the materials or ingredients contents of a building product and the associated
health effects.
Carbon Accounting; new concepts like low-carbon, carbon-neutral and zero carbon buildings - Answers
an emerging effort to begin coping with the huge quantities of carbon emissions associated with the
built environment.
BIM - Answers Building Information Modeling - a design and visualization tool important to the building
industry
Vertical Urbanism - Answers meeting the demands for the built environment, whole ecosystems of
skyscrapers are growing in the worlds burgeoning urban areas and contributing to the emergence of a
new urban form
Climate Change - Answers todays dominant environmental issue, human-caused
Sustainable Construction - Answers the response of the construction industry response to the rapid
negative changes in Earth's environment and its ecosystems.
Three major changes motivating the construction industry - Answers (1) there is growing evidence of
accelerated destruction of planetary ecosystems, alternation of global biogeochemical cycles, and
enormous increases in population and consumption.