RT Journal Article
T1 Green Building Rating Systems and the New Framework Level(s): A Critical Review of Sustainability Certification within Europe
A1 Sánchez Cordero, Antonio
A1 Gómez Melgar, Sergio Jesús
A1 Andújar Márquez, José Manuel
AB Increasing problems regarding pollution and climate change have long been demonstratedby scientific evidence. An important portion of carbon emissions are produced by the building sector.These emissions are directly related not only to the building’s energy consumption, but also otherbuilding attributes a ecting the construction and operation of existing buildings: materials selection,waste management, transportation, water consumption, and others. To help reduce these emissions,several green building rating system (GBRSs) have appeared during the last years. This has madeit di cult for stakeholders to identify which GBRSs could be more suitable to a specific project.The heterogeneity of the GRBS scenario requires the creation of a transparent and robust indicatorframework that can be used in any country within the European Union (EU), which is a commonEU framework of core sustainability indicators for o ce and residential buildings Level(s) withthe goal to provide a solid structure for building sustainability certification across all countriesof the EU. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the most common GBRSs within theEU: Building Research Establishment Assessment Method (BREEAM), Deutsche Gesellschaft fürNachhaltiges Bauen (DGNB), Haute Qualité Environnementale (HQE), and Leadership in Energy& Environmental Design (LEED), and a bottom up comparison of the influence in the final scoreproduced by the indicators stated by Level(s). The indicators studied show a di erent influence ofLevel(s) indicators on every GBRS, where LEED and BREEAM were most a ected while HQE andDGNB were less so. This paper demonstrates the heterogeneity of current GRBSs in the EU scenarioand the di erence between sustainability assessments, where DGNB seems to be more aligned tothe current EU framework. Finally, the paper concludes with the need to work to achieve alignmentbetween the GBRS and Level(s).
PB MDPI
SN 1996-1073
YR 2019
FD 2019-12
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10272/17910
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10272/17910
LA eng
NO Sánchez Cordero, A., Gómez Melgar, S.,  Andújar Márquez, J. M. (2019). Green Building Rating Systems and the New Framework Level(s): A Critical Review of Sustainability Certification within Europe. Energies, 13(1), 66. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/en13010066
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 1 jun 2026