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).