Behzad Sodagar

Comparative analysis of environmental performance of an office building using BREEAM and GBL

With rapid economic growth and urban expansion in China, the Chinese building sector is now facing the huge challenge of balancing its energy demand and pollution. In order to minimize the environmental impact, the Ministry of Housing Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) has set an ambitious energy reduction target requiring that 30% of all new constructions to be green by 2020. This paper presents comparative analysis of two environmental rating systems: the latest version of Chinese Green Building Label (GBL 2014) released by the MOHURD in order to promote the market transformation of green buildings and Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM 2014), the widely recognised environmental assessment methodology in the global construction industry. To compare the two environment assessment standards, a public office building currently under construction in Fujian (China) has been used as a case-study to rate its environmental credentials using both BREEAM and GBL. Results have shown that although both standards use a similar methodology, they require different levels of input data and may result in different ratings for the same building.