Green Star is a comprehensive, national, voluntary environmental rating system that evaluates the environmental design and construction of buildings. With more than 4 million square meters of Green Star-certified space around Australia, and a further 8 million square metres of Green Star-registered space, Green Star has transformed Australia’s property and construction market.
Green Star was developed for the property industry in order to: Establish a common language; Set a standard of measurement for green buildings; Promote integrated, whole-building design; Recognize environmental leadership; Identify building life-cycle impacts; and Raise awareness of green building benefits. This new rating tool will help green building leaders to activate wide-scale building reform and renewal of their existing building stock (totaling 98 per cent of all buildings in Australia).
Green Star – Performance will help building owners, operators and occupants to measure and monitor the environmental impact of their buildings and take practical action to improve their buildings’ performance.
Innovative
Green Star – Performance will:
- Deliver a Green Star rating tool for the existing building market
- Focus on the operation and performance of entire buildings, allowing building owners, operators and occupants to collaborate and contribute to better environmental outcomes
- Establish a common language for the monitoring and maintenance of operational performance.
Inclusive
Green Star – Performance will:
- Rate buildings beyond commercial office buildings, aiming to include schools, shopping centres, public buildings, industrial buildings and hospitals
- Encourage best practice outcomes through building operations
- Assess buildings both with and without pre-existing Green Star certification.
Holistic
Green Star – Performance will:
- Focus on ongoing operational data, with minimum energy and water performance requirements likely to be introduced for each Green Star level
- Maintain Green Star consistency from design, to construction, and through to operations
- Address all nine Green Star categories: Management, Indoor Environment Quality, Energy, Transport, Water, Materials, Land Use & Ecology, Emissions and Innovation
- Support building owners and operators to plan future upgrades and renovations with operational targets.
Easy-to-use
Green Star – Performance will:
- Feature a simple and user-friendly format
- Provide project certifications valid for three years, with yearly energy and water reporting requirements
- Enable projects to apply for certified ratings from 1 to 6 Stars and improve building performance over time.
Complementary
Green Star – Performance will:
- Deliver the green building benefits established in Green Star Design and As Built rating tools in the operational phase of a building’s life cycle
- Include NABERS* Energy and Water ratings as mandatory requirements, whenever available, and when they are not, establish interim benchmarks until appropriate NABERS benchmarks become available
- Introduce ‘portfolio ratings’ to allow whole building portfolios to be assessed using Green Star – Performance (buildings within a portfolio will still be required to be rated individually).