Green Building Council Adds New Tools For Builders

The USGBC, authors of the LEED rating system for sustainable developments, has announced new tools for tracking and developing "green" building and real estate projects. The database of green buildings will include data from 80,000 installations, showcasing techniques that earned sites like UC Irvine's Humanities Gateway (pictured) LEED Platinum status.

The US Green Building Council (USGBC) has introduced new tools for assessing the sustainability and environmental compatibility of real estate projects.

The first of two new products is the Green Building Information Gateway (GBIG), unveiled last November. The GBIG is a database of information on LEED certification and other green building certification amassed by the USGBC over the last decade, and will provide users with a global platform equipped with a vast trove of data and powerful analytic capabilities.

The GBIG will provide information on areas like energy efficiency, water efficiency and daylight views, enabling builders to examine the detailed specifications of existing installations with green credentials. The gateway allows users to view data from 80,000 buildings, which are pursuing roughly 133,000 green building activities, and peruse around 1,000 different green building strategies, including green roofs and energy efficiency strategies.

The GBIG will also provide context for the projects via comparisons to other buildings, as well as the average figures for various specifications. The database of certified green buildings will have a search function for developers or investors looking for projects based on their criteria.

"The intent of GBIG is to provide some transparency and context for those green building activities and the ability to learn from those highest-performing projects," said Chris Pyke, USGBC vice president.

The second tool, developed by the US Green Building Council in collaboration with the FTSE Group in London and NAREIT in Washington DC, provides users with another powerful tool for assessing the green specifications of prospective real estate investments. The FTSE NAREIT USGBC US Green Real Estate Index, slated for release this autumn, is based on existing real estate tools developed by FTSE and NAREIT, already widely used by institutional investors.

"The original FTSE NAREIT Index tracks about $500 billion worth of REIT assets. We are looking at a slice of that "?(R)? at the intersection between those 30,000-plus properties and the 15,000-plus LEED-certified properties and the 17,000-plus Energy Star-labeled properties," Pyke said.

The US Green Real Estate Index is slated for release to institutional investors this quarter, and Pyke expects designers to use the index to create investable products for environmentally concerned clients.