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GREEN BUILDING INITIATIVE™ COMPLETES GROUNDBREAKING SOFTWARE FOR LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
New Tool Measures Global Warming and Other Environmental Impacts of Building Assemblies

Portland, Ore. (January 24, 2007) — Designing a sustainable structure that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts will soon be easier, thanks to a new Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool developed by the Green Building Initiative (GBI) to compare alternate design scenarios.

LCA considers materials over the course of their entire lives and takes into account a full range of environmental impact indicators-including embodied energy, solid waste, air and water pollution, and global warming potential.

Developed primarily for use with the GBI's Green Globe™ environmental assessment and rating system, the new software tool provides LCA results for more than 400 common building assemblies in low- and high-rise categories-including exterior walls, roofs, intermediate floors, interior walls, windows, and columns and beams. It was created through a contract with Morrison Hershfield Consulting Engineers, in association with the University of Minnesota's Center for Sustainable Building Research and the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute. Athena's Environmental Impact Estimator software was used to generate the results embedded in the tool.

"This project is tied to the GBI objective of making green building more accessible to the mainstream design community," said Ward Hubbell, executive director of the GBI. "LCA is essential to green building because it allows the impartial comparison of materials, assemblies and even whole buildings, but it poses a challenge for many designers-in terms of complexity as well as time. Our intent is to simplify the process in order to facilitate informed choices."

Because the GBI has also initiated the process to establish Green Globes as an official standard under the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the LCA tool must be reviewed by the ANSI technical sub-committee before being integrated into the web-based Green Globes system.

"Life Cycle Assessment represents a shift in the way rating systems have traditionally approached green building," said Wayne Trusty, president of Athena and chair of the GBI's ANSI technical committee. "Instead of rewarding materials or products for specific attributes, rating systems such as Green Globes are increasingly looking at performance measures, such as global warming potential, and giving designers the flexibility to choose how to achieve their environmental goals. LCA is a means to this end."

Once it is reviewed by the ANSI technical sub-committee, the LCA tool will be integrated into the Green Globes system. The GBI also intends to release the tool for general use by the broader design community, in order to encourage more people to design and build green.

ABOUT THE GREEN BUILDING INITIATIVE: The mission of the Green Building Initiative is to accelerate the adoption of building practices that result in energy-efficient, healthier and environmentally sustainable buildings by promoting credible and practical green building approaches. A not-for-profit education initiative, the GBI is supported by a broad cross section of organizations and individuals with an interest in residential and commercial construction. For more information on the Green Building Initiative, please visit www.thegbi.org.