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17 March 2010 | 1 replies | 1745 visits
There’s a rapidly growing appetite for rating methodologies that can be used to demonstrate the environmental performance of our activities, ranging from personal carbon footprinting tools to complex sustainability assessments and standards of components, buildings and entire cities. There are also rapidly growing demands to demonstrate sustainability in many aspects of the built environment, which result in a flood of claims and counter-claims togheter with the development of more and more standards, guidance and rating methods. While much of this work is well founded and helpful in moving the agenda forward, the plethora of approaches introduces confusion and conflict in the marketplace and a lack of consistency in priorities and direction. This acts as a barrier to take up and therefore to meeting the objectives that these initiatives set-out to achieve. With this community we would like to initiate a discussion on the information needs of the industry and the different stakeholders regarding the harmonization of sustainability metrics. Please do not hesitate to post your comments and be heard !
Some additional food for thought
First of all, thank you for this initiative which I believe raises some very important points. I have worked in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) where I have seen similarly diverse methodologies used to reflect the sustainability "triple bottom line". I believe that most of my peers would welcome approaches that bridge existing schemes in strategic areas such as sustainability of the built environment. For example, is a LEED certified building equivalent to a specific class in a European country? Should energy efficiency of the built environment integrate transport parameters --i.e. reducing commuting needs? Are fitness issues taken into account when discussing thermal comfort? These are very diverse questions, but nevertheless represent issues that professionals involved in sustainability topics are often required to address.