Elemental

The following example is one which BRE used at the recent Part L 2010 workshop I attended a few weeks ago. At the time I was mildly amused by the fact that they’d given us the example, but hadn’t worked out a solution themselves. Having been through umpteen iterations, I can see why.

I’m going to use this example as a way of demonstrating some key points with regards the new Part L, which I don’t think everyone in the industry has picked up yet. I am assuming of course that Part L 2010 will come in on 1 October. Perhaps no-one else shares my optimism and are ignoring the changes in the hope they’ll go away and die a slow death.

• Biomass is no longer the silver bullet it was under 2006
• EPC’s in 2010 are on a different scale to EPC’s in 2006, so cannot be compared easily (as we suspected – see the comments following this post in May)
• A building which had an EPC of 40 under Part L 2006, gaining an Excellent under BREEAM 2008, does not automatically pass Part L 2010
• a 25% improvement over 2006 does not automatically mean your building will pass under 2010 – the aggregate approach means there are no easy rules of thumb – and that table which I linked to in this post has disappeared
• An low EPC under Part L 2010 does not guarantee Part L compliance
• The efficiency of building services has by far the greatest effect on ratings

It has turned out to be a very long article so to read the whole thing, see under the fold. Read more…

admin Accreditation isbem, Part L, Part L 2010

Interesting that in the US the tendency is to pilot first, and come up with the ‘real’ scheme later.

Under the pilot program, which launched in December 2009, new buildings are eligible to receive an As Designed, or asset, rating, which provides an assessment of the building based on the components specified in the design and is based on the results of building energy modeling and simulation. An In Operation rating is available once the building has at least one year of data on the actual energy use and is based on a combination of the structure of the building and how it is operated. Existing buildings would be eligible to receive both an As Designed and In Operation rating.

What’s Your Building EQ? Pilot Program Buildings About to Find Out!

We have a tendency in the UK to scope the scheme and then dive in. When it doesn’t work out , we perhaps try to fit square pegs into round holes, rather than admit the original idea was misplaced (am I being too harsh here?). Then again, piloting loses time which we know is short. I first spotted BEQ back in July 2009 and they’re still only developing. Hmmm. Still, interesting to compare the cultural differences.

Anyway, the BEQ is roughly analogous to EPC and DEC in the UK.

admin Accreditation ashrae, beq

The eagle eyed amongst you may have spotted a new page on the blog - global building accreditation schemes. It is very much a work in progress and I’ve missed any obvious schemes, please let me know.

As new announcements are made, I add them into the google spreadsheet which sits behind the page. For example, yesterday I added Italy LEED to the list – this is the first European country to commit to LEED – BREEAM up until now had penetrated the market to a much greater extent. The news is different elsewhere in the world – LEED dominates in most other regions.

Many articles debate which scheme will ‘win’ the battle. For my money, it’s too early to call, both systems have different business models which may suit different local conditions and economic realities. Sustainability, in my opinion, is context specific and subjective. This is another problem with simplifying into codes.
Humans by our very nature like to simplify things and make things easier for our brains – we use heuristics (to reduce the effort on our brain). LEED and BREEAM are no more than useful shorthand for today’s most widely accepted definitions of what a sustainable building looks like.

In the future voluntary green accreditation schemes may be overtaken by local building codes (Building Regs in the UK). There is a great little paper from USGBC here (pdf, 8 pgs) which outlines the history of building codes:

The idea of a building code is more than 3,000 years old. Even the earliest civilizations recognized that predictable and consistent minimum standards had to apply to construction materials and practice in order to provide practical and adequate protection of human life, safety and the welfare of the community at large. The Code of Hammurabi, named for the founder of the Babylonian Empire, outlined the responsibilities of builders for the safe construction of buildings and laid out harsh punishment for those who failed to comply.
Around 64 A.D. the purview of the codes was widened to include for the first time, fire safety. Though the wealthy Roman Empire kept close rein on its public buildings, it was the burning of Rome—largely due to poorly made, flammable and otherwise unprotected buildings—that gave the impetus for a new generation of safer buildings and neighborhoods in Nero’s subsequent master plan.
But as with much of the rest of the body of ancient knowledge, these Roman codes did not survive the Dark Ages. It took the great fire of London in 1666 to give rise to another early set of fire safety regulations. This same harsh reality was subsequently faced in cities across the globe: fire in cities and in buildings is a threat to human life and public safety, thus public officials around the world were faced with the clear and present obligation to safeguard against its devastating effects.

Worth reading the whole paper – in my opinion there will always be a space for a voluntary scheme which rewards those who do more than the statutory minimum. Whether this remains LEED or indeed BREEAM is a moot point to me. What I am in favour of is both systems keeping ahead of the curve (again, in my opinion, this is where Code for Sustainable Homes has in effect fallen down). USGBC seem to concur:

For the large number of jurisdictions embarking on sustainability planning, and also for those who are well on their way, a green building code and an above-code green building rating system provide the best-case scenario of push-and-pull market-driving tools. Without stronger, more comprehensive codes, the majority of buildings may remain untouched by the positive benefits that building green provides. But without above-code rating systems, these codes may be seen as the best we can possibly do, rather than the most we can reasonably expect. Any jurisdiction engaged in sustainability planning should be considering the universe of available green building policy options, and pressing hard to further the policy innovations that have become a hallmark of the green building movement.

Do you agree?

admin Accreditation Accreditation, BREEAM, global, LEED

I’m almost finished writing my final installment on BREEAM vs LEED, but I’ve run out of time to publish it this week.  In the meantime, you may be interested to know that CIBSE have a conference coming up on this very subject on 10th Feb 2010 in Balham. A snip at £225 for members.

Hear from Chris Twinn (Arup), Alfonso Ponce-Alvarez, (Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment), Ivan Rodriguez (URS Corp), Esfandiar Burman (ARCADIS), Sean Lockie (Faithful+Gould), Steven Brindle (Waterman Energy & Environment Design), Vincent Murray (IES) and Angus McIntosh (Kings Sturge).

BREEAM and LEED are the two most widely recognised environmental assessment methodologies used in the construction industry today.   Whilst the thrust of the two are similar – i.e. conserving energy and reducing carbon emissions, generally it is not straightforward to compare the two. What might be applicable in one assessment method might not be relevant in another.

How can a project team determine under which methodology their project can achieve the best rating? This conference aims to give you the necessary background and help you make an informed decision about your project.

admin Accreditation, Events Add new tag, BREEAM, LEED

This follow up post is for those who are familiar with BREEAM and have some knowledge of the credit numberings and weightings for both schemes. If you need to refer to the manuals the BREEAM manual can be found here and the LEED manual can be found here.

If you are just looking for an overview, try the first post in this series here.

I start with a brief overview of LEED 2009 scoring and prerequisites.

Then I look at the main differences and significant similarities in LEED 2009 from BREEAM 2008.

I finish with the weightings which are now within LEED – a significant change between v2 and 2009 which brings it much more in line with BREEAM.

LEED 2009

LEED 2009 replaced LEED 2.0 from 27 April 2009. All discussion which follows refers to LEED-NC (new construction). There are small differences for the other schemes.

Unlike BREEAM, LEED is a points rather than percentage system. There are 100 base points, 6 possible Innovation in Design and 4 Regional Priority points.

Prerequisites

LEED introduced prerequisites before BREEAM’s mandatory credits. Prerequisites are mandatory for all ratings.

Sustainable Sites

• SSP1 – Construction Activity Pollution Prevention

Water Efficiency

• WE1 – Water Use Reduction

Energy and Atmosphere

• EAP1 – Fundamental Commissioning of Building Energy Systems
• EAP2 – Minimum Energy Performance
• EAP3 – Fundamental Refrigerant Management

Materials and Resources

• MRP1 – Storage and Collection of Recyclables

Indoor Environmental Quality

• EQP1 – Minimum Indoor Air Quality Performance
• EQP2 – Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) Control

Sustainable Sites

SS1 forbids development on farmland, wetlands and within 50 feet of a water body. BREEAM has no equivalent (but these may be covered elsewhere within UK legislation).

SS2 requires development density calculations which BREEAM does not. There are similarities in the types of services (bank, shops, post office, etc) which the development is rewarded for being near.

SS3 (brownfield development) is considerably easier to achieve than LE2 (contaminated land).

The transport credits in LEED are considerably less onerous than the BREEAM equivalents. For example, a 300,00ft² office building would require 95 cycle spaces under BREEAM, but only 36 under LEED. LEED rewards specific parking for LEV and FEV or for an LEV sharing scheme. There is no current equivalent under BREEAM, but there is the opportunity to propose this as an innovation credit.

SS5.2 promotes a high proportion of open space to encourage biodiversity. There is no BREEAM equivalent.

SS7.1 and 7.2 refer to heat island effect which BREEAM does not cover, although green roofs are rewarded (for different reasons) under LE 4, LE 5, LE 6 and Pol 5.

Water Efficiency

WEP1 looks at water use reduction against a baseline, rather than setting an absolute target like BREEAM.

WE1 looks at irrigation which is included as Wat 6 in some BREEAM schemes, but not currently in BREEAM Offices 2008.

WE2 relates to BREEAM credit Wat 5, recycling, which is again not included in BREEAM Offices 2008.

In BREEAM there are 3 credits which reward specific design solutions or technologies, namely water meters, sanitary supply shut-off and major leak detection. LEED tends not to dictate design solutions, focussing instead on the intention (i.e. water use reduction).

Energy & Atmosphere

EAP2 requires the building to be designed to ASHRAE 90.1. This is more onerous than designing to CIBSE standards and UK Building Regulations, and there is no BREEAM equivalent. However, by designing to this standard, there is no need to specifically require technologies or design solutions, in the same way that BREEAM does. It gives designers more discretion.

EAP3 relates to refrigeration and is covered in the EU by legislation.

EA1 is roughly equivalent to Ene 1. However there are 2 key differences – it is stated in terms of improvement over a baseline in energy, rather than a target carbon amount, and is also stated in terms of COST of energy. This is also the case for EA2 which looks at renewable and is roughly equivalent to Ene 5.

There is a total of 11.85% available for BREEAM Offices 2008 Ene 1 for a zero carbon building (which relates to Building Regulation Part L calculations). The maximum number of points available under LEED is 19 for a 48% improvement on energy performance calculated from Appendix G baseline from ASHRAE 90.1-2007. Points are very roughly equivalent to 0.9%, so a maximum 17% in LEED for a very good low energy building versus almost 12% for a zero carbon building seems better value! The calculations are more onerous for ASHRAE than for Part L.

The other main difference in LEED is that Green Power is rewarded, whereas in BREEAM contracts with green energy suppliers is not rewarded.

Materials & Resources

MRP1 relates to storage for recyclable waste. This is similar to BREEAM but the areas required are much greater – almost double at smaller floor areas and 1.5 times as large at higher floor areas.

LEED generally deals in percentage improvements rather than absolute values. This applies to the reuse of materials too. There are a number of additional credits to BREEAM where items such as rapidly renewable materials, local materials and reuse of interior elements are rewarded.

Rather than focus on an accreditation scheme and chain of paperwork (which Mat 5 in BREEAM now uses), the intentions are stated and it is up to the assessor and design teams discretion to ensure compliance is met.

There is still a focus in both schemes for rewarded recycling rather than reducing waste in the first place.

Indoor Environmental Quality

IEQP1 relates to ASHRAE 62.1. There is no BREEAM equivalent as minimum ventilation rates are covered by Building Regulations.

IEQ1, IEQ2, IEQ3 and IEQ5 are quite sophisticated and beyond any current UK requirements. BREEAM does not reward well designed mechanically ventilated systems. If a building requires mech vent, LEED may well be the better accreditation to go for.

IEQ7.1 requires ability to measure post-occupancy thermal comfort. This is far and beyond BREEAM or CIBSE, but is picked up in BSRIA’s soft landing framework.

IEQ8 covers daylight and is similar in scope but uses a different methodology to BREEAM.

Weightings

Whilst LEED does not convert points into a percentage in the same way that BREEAM does, there was a considerable change in allocation of points per credit between LEED 2.0 and LEED 2009 which means there is now an implicit weighting. As this article points out, the new credit weightings heavily favor urban projects.

Comparing the weightings per credits for LEED 2.0 vs. LEED 2009

admin Accreditation BREEAM, LEED

I promised, what seems years ago, to write some thoughts on the differences between LEED and BREEAM. Initially I had intended to pull together the highlights into one article, as I was sure I had seen a credit by credit analysis elsewhere. I can’t now find that and this post had started to get monstrously long, so this is the first of 3 articles.

I’ve been BREEAM qualified since about 2002, around half my professional career, and LEED-AP for almost a year. BREEAM in particular has been good to me over the past decade although I do have my reservations.

For new readers or those coming from the US, you might want to start with my rough guide to BREEAM 2008. And for an excellent primer on LEED 2009, I cannot recommend highly enough this post over at Real Life LEED.

BSRIA have an excellent article here from February 2009 which covers some of the differences between the two schemes:

So is the dynamic tension between two competing systems desirable? Clearly, a one-size-fits-all assessment scheme would be difficult to achieve on a global basis. For example, water efficiency is a major issue in Dubai and Australia, but not in Scotland and nor in Wales. So different issues need to be ranked differently to match regional environment and regulations.

While LEED is dominated by the American ASHRAE standards, BREEAM takes it cue from European and UK legislation. The regional versions of both schemes flow from those antecedents.

BREEAM Gulf has been adapted for the local market. Gone are the Good, Very Good, and Excellent ratings, and in comes star ratings. The weightings are changed so that water is the key issue, rather than energy as in the standard UK schemes. In addition to the CIBSE guidance being the measure for certain credits, ASHRAE and other standards are also now referenced in BREEAM Gulf.

BREEAM has long been able to adapt to local contexts. With BREEAM Bespoke, for example, the assessor can work with BRE to develop assessment criteria specially tailored to a building where it doesn’t fit neatly into one of the existing schemes.

I would interject at this point and say that this is a bit of a fallacy. Whilst BREEAM Bespoke is flexible, the core content of the credits is already set out – clients often believe they will be able to write credits from scratch if they go down the BREEAM Bespoke route and can be disappointed when they find they can’t.

LEED, however, has not been created with this level of adaptability and it is not run that way. Instead it is fixed to the ASHRAE standards and the US way of thinking (for example, credits are awarded for having enough car parking spaces, rather than minimising them as in BREEAM).

There are also differences in the way LEED calculates credits. They are generally linked to the US Dollar (especially the energy credits), which means that if the exchange rate is unfavourable, then the building’s rating could suffer.

A key change that may make LEED more exportable is the introduction of regional bonus credits. Six regional priority credits will be available based on what the US-GBC’s regional councils and chapters deem important, environmentally, in that region.

A downside is that these credits are not available for non-US projects. However, there are national versions of LEED being developed by individual national green building councils. Canada was the first, followed by India. Countries such as Brazil and Italy are looking to have their own versions soon.

The table above is courtesy of Eszter Gulacsy from MTT/Sustain. It summarises the key differences between the two schemes, which I will go into some more detail in the next post.

A further consideration, going back to my post on politics in sustainability, is that BREEAM reflects UK thinking and LEED reflects US thinking. I have mapped where I think the two schemes might fall on the Nolan Chart:

Feel free to disagree with where I have placed them, I’m sure US readers will guffaw at my thinking that LEED is libertarian – it perhaps falls more into the centrist section?

Generally BREEAM dictates specific technologies or strategies, whereas LEED states the intention of the credit and leaves it up to the designers discretion as to how to meet it. This is an important difference. It would be interesting to compare the countries which have chosen BREEAM over LEED and see if there is any correlation to prevalent political thinking.

My next post in this series will begin to look at the detail, including a credit by credit breakdown of the two schemes.

admin Accreditation BREEAM, LEED

I often get requests from students for help with dissertations (and this blog suffers from a fall in readers during the summer recess, so hello and thanks to all the students reading!). This one particularly stood out and was in response to my post BREEAM is a means to an end. Anthony makes some good points and I would be fascinated to hear what others think. Let’s have a little crowdsourcing and see if we can arrive at a consensus (or at least collate some good resources). My initial comment is that the first objective alone would encompass enough material to explore in a dissertation – the scope is certainly ambitious! So, read the request below and add comments where appropriate:

Dear Mel (and anyone else who picks this up)

I am an MSc Student preparing to write a Dissertation on “BREEAM is it worth it and does its careful design and implementation help or hinder the construction process” I have found reference to your BREAM on your website and was wondering if you still had the same thought and whether or not you cuold share some of them with me in relation to my dissertion outlined below,I would be most grateful for your thoughts and ides.

The Proposed Project:

The author is a consultant working for a University, managing an Enhanced Health and Safety/Construction Design and Management (CDM) Service. The University have a large scale building and refurbishment programme where one of their key objectives is to achieve an excellent rating on the British Research Establishments Environmental Assessment Model (BREEAM) for new builds and very good for refurbishments. As the CDM Co-ordinator (CDMC) the author has coordinated the design and construction of numerous multimillion pound projects where BREEAM has been successfully implemented. However in the opinion of others on the design team, it has been very difficult to achieve the required points.

It is the author’s opinion that the Clients desire for a sustainable property portfolio is driven by pressure from higher education funding bodies such as HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) who, prior to the release of funds will scrutinise the applicant for its green credentials.

The principle behind this paper is to ascertain if effective design and planning actually improves sustainability, safety and quality on projects or is the client being driven by public perception and corporate and social responsibilities and ultimately paying a high price for a building they cannot effectively manage!

Provisional Overall aim of the Project:

The overall aim of the project is to establish if implementing BREEAM is actually worth the time, money and whether design and execution of sustainable building techniques helps or hinders the construction process.

Specific Research Objectives:

The aim of the following objectives will assist in either proving or disproving if the provisional aim of the project is true or false. It is envisaged that the objectives listed below will be translated into questions for use within the questionnaire.

- To confirm if a sustainable building is what the Client actually wants or if the are they being forced into the process by outside factors such as planning authorities and funding bodies?

- To ascertain, roughly, who much additional costs does the implementation of BREEAM place on a construction project?

- Does the “Green Guide to Construction” interlace with BREEAM and modern building techniques?

- To establish if there is a correlation between the installations of highly technical equipment and an increase in construction site accidents due to an aging workforce.

As previously mentioned your assistance on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

Anthony Heaton-Jones

admin Accreditation BREEAM, client, HEFCE, Sustainability

I’ve been doing a little market research on various sustainable buildings accreditation schemes for professionals in the UK (rather than the buildings or products) and thought a round up of my findings might be useful to others. Data is correct as of 14 August 2009.

First up is CIBSE‘s LCC (Low Carbon Consultants). There are 1546 LCC’s listed in this directory. From their site: “Members of the Low Carbon Consultants Register are a body of professionals competent to minimize energy use and carbon emissions from buildings both in design and operation. They are able to go beyond the current legal minima in improving the energy performance of both new and existing buildings. Clients can be sure that buildings designed and operated by Low Carbon Consultants will meet the requirements of Part L (Conservation of Fuel and Power) and Building Control Officers can be assured that compliance is being signed off by suitably qualified professionals.”

This leads on to NDEA or non-domestic energy assessors. About a third of LCC’s are also LCEA’s (for EPC’s – there are 943 including DEC and other schemes) through CIBSE, but there are a total of 3,027 (confirmed by the ever wonderful TheyWorkForYou.com – correct on 6 July 2009) through seven providers including BRE (342), Stroma and NHER. The national register is here run by Landmark. Only CIBSE and Stroma appear to have EPC Level 5 (DSM – dynamic simulation modelling). Confused yet?

Talking of BRE, let’s move on to BREEAM assessors. The register is held at Green Book Live. There are approximately 950 non-domestic BREEAM assessors.

And now BRE have launched BREEAM AP. Expect to hear more about this in the near future on this blog. There are currently 21 BREEAM AP (with more to follow as another exam was held on 14 August).

Finally, LEED AP in the UK. The LEED professional directory can be found here. The LEED AP qualification is currently going through some changes following on from the release of LEED 3.0. There are 254 LEED AP in the UK and 1 Green Associate.

What is really fun is where the overlaps start to meet. It’s tough to analyse quickly and easily (so I haven’t looked at it fully) but I’m almost curious enough to get the work done. I was quoted a very reasonable price on eLance. Would anyone else be interested in this data? Would anyone be willing to pay for the results if I go ahead with it? Alternatively, I could play around with Venny for some quick and dirty Venn diagram comparisons.

Finally, it occured to me that there is no national register of renewable energy consultants or energy strategy experts. I would have thought it would be prudent of CIBSE to put such a scheme in place to prevent snake oil salesmen and cowboys jumping on the sustainability bandwagon.

admin Accreditation BREEAM, LCC, LCEA, LEED, NDEA

Instead of today’s usual posting of links (I’m behind on my reading thanks to the Part L consultation which I am slowly digesting), here are two gorgeous websites with visualisations of LEED, both via Twitter.

The first is LeedVisual which uses one page per credit with simple illustrations, for instance for EQ_2, a simple diagram:

As a learning tool for the exam, this is brilliant. Probably not much use to a practicioner, but some elegantly simple illustrations.

The second, I love even more. The LEED NC v2.2 Study Map is obviously a sample of the web designer’s work, but it is beautiful. As a tool for study it is superb, but I could also see a use for practitioners. I would love to have the ability to blow this up and print at large scale, so I could scribble on it. You really need to visit the website to zoom in and see the level of detail they have gone into (including linkages).

I’ve done similar exercises for BREEAM on pinboards with index cards, post-its and string for both internal and external use, but nothing this elegant.

admin Accreditation LEED, visualisation

The UKGBC released a report called “Biodiversity and the built environment” on 31 March 2009. The portal was a couple of days late but was available when I checked on 3 April. I would recommend reading the full report (a quick read at 38 pages, mostly appendices). Below, I pull out the pertinent information regarding BREEAM and LEED.

Biodiversity and ecology are the areas I am least qualified to talk about under sustainable buildings, so it’s good to see some more guidance.

The report focuses on new build, rather than existing sites, but most of the advice seems suitable for both scenarios. There is a useful section on page 14 which covers UK Biodiversity Action Plans – the portal has much more information on this:

The UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) has established the framework and criteria for identifying priority species and habitat types for conservation. National priorities and targets are set and action is to be taken at a local level. Today there are over 160 Local Biodiversity Action Plans (LBAPs) in England, Scotland and Wales and LBAPs are currently being set up in Northern Ireland.

The BAP system classifies priority habitats into broader habitat groupings. The most relevant broad category for the construction industry is ‘Towns, Cities and Development’. However, within this category there is currently only one priority habitat, which is ‘Open Mosaic Habitats on Previously Developed Land’ applicable to some brownfield land.

The task group recommends that further additions should be made to the broad ‘Towns, Cities and Development’ category, in order to ensure that features of the built environment are recognised as important in their own right.

The group recommends that features of the built environment that provide vital habitat to species and plants should be recognised for their importance such as living roofs and walls and other biodiversity features. This would recognise industry efforts to provide for building-reliant species in new structures where traditional roosting or nesting places would no longer be present due to the need to employ techniques to reduce carbon emissions from housing, such as swift nesting and bat roosting features incorporated into new housing projects.

Part of the report reviews existing tools, including BREEAM and LEED and assesses the quality of the biodiversity credits within each. From page 11:

Each of these tools incentivises the consideration of biodiversity in new construction, and tools are therefore a significant driver for changing industry practice.

…

In summary, the task group found:

• There is no common approach to assessment of biodiversity across the principal sustainability tools.
• Sustainability tools could be improved to assess biodiversity in a more meaningful way, which better assesses the value of habitats that are gained and lost.
• Improvements could be made to the tools which focus users on making a genuine contribution to local ecological value, rather than unintentionally encouraging a ‘tickbox’ approach.
• Sustainability tools do not encourage the industry to appropriately monitor and therefore meaningfully maintain and manage habitats created through development.

The results of the review of BREEAM and LEED is below:

A comment in Appendix 5 covers some concerns regarding the need for a professional ecologist:

During initial consultations both parties raised strong concerns over the task group’s suggestion that a professional ecologist should be appointed to the project team as a pre-requisite to achieving credit for biodiversity. The inclusion of an ecologist could potentially increase costs and not be a viable option for smaller projects.

Anyone looking at the list of letters after my name can work out I am a fan of professional qualifications. Whilst a small job may be able to ‘get away’ without an ecologist, I would agree that suitably qualified and experienced ecologists should be used on most BREEAM projects. And as I say above, it is the area I am least qualified to do myself.

It is possible to roughly map the land use and ecology credits in BREEAM to LEED in order to compare the two. This covers more than just diodiversity and ecology, with land use intrinsically linked:

The other credit in LEED which indirectly affects biodiversity is SS7.2 Heat Island Effect – Roof which has no BREEAM equivalent. This credit could encourage the use of green roofs, which will have an effect on biodiversity.

As the UKGBC note, LEED does not promote habitat and wildlife as well as BREEAM. I’m not sure why this might be, but I do expect the two schemes to continue to converge in the next few years. Perhaps LEED 3.0 will address this shortcoming.

There are plenty of opportunities to improve biodiversity in new build projects – the portal looks a great resource for finding out how. It also looks as if other topics will be added in the future.

edit: I was clearing out some old drafts when I came across this nugget of information which has relevance to the above: “From 1st October 2006, all public sector bodies, from the police to the BBC, will have to consider biodiversity in the work they do. The new duty comes under Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act.”

For further details, search on the portal.

admin Accreditation biodiversity, BREEAM, guidance, LEED, UKGBC