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News
New GSA Report on Green Building Offers Opportunities for Vinyl
A new report from the General Services Administration (GSA) concludes that the Green Building Initiative’s (GBI) Green Globes rating system continues to meet federal requirements for green buildings. The assessment comes after a study, High-Performance Building Certification Ratings Systems, that looked at over 100 building rating systems worldwide.
The new study updates a previous study that led to the approval of Green Globes as one of only two green building certification programs that meet federal requirements. As a result of the earlier (2012) determination, 8 federal agencies have certified or third-party assessed 611 projects using either Green Globes or GBI’s Guiding Principles Compliance program. Almost 150 additional federal building project reviews are in process.
The new study is expected to keep GBI’s rating system in the government fold.
“The study demonstrates that Green Globes for New Construction fully met federal criteria for consensus-based approaches, transparency, usability, maturity, independence, and verification,” said Micah Thomas, GBI’s director of program development and compliance. He added that the program “also fully met more of the federal energy efficiency and healthy effective environments sub-criteria that the other two systems evaluated against federal new construction standards.”
What this means for the vinyl industry.
The new study is good news for the vinyl industry. It means continued recognition of the contribution vinyl products make to greener buildings.
The criteria for green building rating systems is based on providing a designed building system solution that meets a certain sustainable intent – energy and water savings, indoor environmental quality strategies, environmental impacts of material and resource selections, and reduction in building emissions and effluents. Vinyl products make significant sustainable contributions in all these areas. Green Globes allows building owners, facility managers and property developers to select sustainability features that best fit their building and occupants.
Revised standard makes Green Globes even greener.
In a related development, GBI announced the release of Green Globes 2019.
Vicki Warden, GBI president, said that updates to the standard will happen every two years “to keep the standard and rating system in lock step with advances in the market and the constantly advancing baselines.”
The latest version, ANSI-GBI 01-2019: Green Globes Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings, includes language on resilience, life cycle cost analysis, moisture control analysis, health and effectiveness, and many other market advances, such as higher efficiency plumbing fixture specifications and greatly expanded lighting and acoustic comfort sections.