A review of the green building rating systems

Abstract

Green buildings have received much attention since the early 90s due to increasing concerns over the sustainability of buildings. The rise of green buildings spurred the need to systematically evaluate hence certify those buildings using a set of established criteria. This led to the emergence of numerous green building rating systems. This review compares 10 popular green building rating systems to identify their similarities, differences and the potential future studies in this area. It identifies 17 evaluation criteria as the basis of comparison and ranks the importance of the most common criteria based on their average weights across the rating systems of interest. This review shows that energy efficiency, indoor environment, health and wellbeing, sustainable siting, material efficiency, water efficiency and innovation as the most prevalent evaluation criteria in descending average weights. This study identifies the future need to probe into the implementation of the rating systems and the building performance ensuing such implementation. It is also crucial to understand the barriers in popularizing green building awards or certification. This review contributes to both the knowledge and practices of green building rating.