Letter from the President

One of our mantras at the GBI is that “there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to green building.” The market can bear (and frankly needs) a variety of options that accommodate a full range of budgets and building types, as well as the individual preferences of architects, builders and others in a position to influence the adoption of sustainable building practices.

The same can be said for green building standards.

Since GBI began the formal process to establish the Green Globes™ system as the first ANSI standard for commercial green building, several other organizations have followed our lead in pursuit of their own complementary standards. Once complete, the result will be a greater range of options for design and construction professionals, as well as a clear demonstration—from the market itself— that there’s more than one path to green.

For example:

• The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) is working with the US Department of Energy and US standards-writing organizations to develop its own minimum standard for high performance buildings.  The standard will cover design objectives related to sustainability (such as energy, moisture and durability) as well as those (such as security) related to other aspects of performance.

• Last month, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) released a draft standard for the design of high performance green buildings. Known as Standard 189, it will provide minimum guidelines for sustainability-related objectives such as energy-efficiency, water use and indoor environmental quality.

• ASTM International is also working on a standard that specifies the minimum attributes of a building that promotes sustainability.

• The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is working to establish its Model Green Home Building Guidelines as the first ANSI standard for residential green building.

• And then there’s our own ANSI standard, which will go beyond minimum guidelines and encourage higher levels of building performance through use of the Green Globes rating system—while also providing the design assistance and long-term tracking that can help users to achieve their high performance goals.

In addition to our ANSI efforts, GBI is participating in the NAHB’s ANSI process as well as the work underway at ASTM, and will continue to provide whatever assistance we can to move these programs forward.  We believe that, together, the initiatives above will be good for designers, builders, consumers and the environment, and will bring more people into the world of green building .

Sincerely,

Ward Hubbell
President