The unwritten history of green building rating tools: a personal view from some of the 'founding fathers'

Abstract

It is generally accepted that the world’s first green building rating tool was BREEAM. However, the history of this rating tool, and the ones that followed it like LEED and Greenstar, is not well documented by the literature and stands the risk of being lost as the founding fathers retire and pass on. Through personal correspondence with key industry participants like Rob Watson, Nigel Howard and Jerry Yudelson, the authors have sought to document this, almost lost, history to enable future researchers in this space to better understand why green building rating tools have originated in the manner and form they have. The research has uncovered previously undocumented information on the history of these rating tools, including the decision-making process that created key structural elements of the tools, like categories and weightings. This history is key to gaining an understanding of why these green building rating tools operate the way they do, especially their holistic nature and fundamental ‘design’ and ‘construction’ rating basis. It also provides insight into the future of these rating tools and whether they can continue to be agents for transformational change in their current form. Full paper available at https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2019.1627179

Keywords: Green building, sustainable buildings, LEED, BREEAM, Green Star, Homestar