A future focus for Green Star
10 April 2018
GBCA:
Climate change. Globalisation. Rapid
urbanisation. Technological innovation. Resilience. Human rights.
These are some of the global megatrends reshaping the world, and the
property industry.
The Green Building Council of Australia’s vision responds to this
changing world: Healthy, resilient and positive places for people and
the natural
environment.
Our vision looks to the future. The next revision of
Green Star must do
so too.
The last revision to Green Star, launched in 2014, presented four
easy-to-use rating tools that address the majority of Australia’s built
environment.
Industry embraced these rating tools – and the numbers don’t lie.
At the start of 2014, we had 646 Green Star certified projects. Today,
we've just cracked 1,750. That’s more than 1,000
buildings, fitouts and
communities.
Thirty-seven per cent of Australia’s office space is Green Star-rated
and more than 725,000 Australians work in Green Star offices. A further
42,000 people live in Green Star apartments.
More than 425,000 people are moving into Green Star-rated communities,
and 1.3 million people visit a Green Star-rated shopping centre each
day.
These are laudable achievements – but we can’t afford to rest on our
laurels. Decisions that we make today will shape the future of countless
generations.
What does the built environment that we want to live in look like?
We believe it means places that enhance health and
wellbeing, celebrate
culture and community, and connect with nature.
It means places that are resilient to future environmental and economic
shocks.
It means
carbon positive and biodiverse places that give more back to
the environment than they take.
This is our vision of our future built environment.
Which is why the next version of Green Star must be future-focused.
We want your support as we redefine world leadership and best practice,
expand Green Star’s scope to encompass more
social sustainability issues
and incorporate new requirements that encourage ongoing operational
performance.
And we need your insights as we look to integrate tenant impacts into
our
buildings, and building impacts into our precincts.
Most importantly, we want your support to ramp up Green Star
requirements in line with the 1.5°C trajectory set out in the Paris
Agreement.
We want carbon positive buildings.
We want world leading Green Star rated buildings and fitouts to be fully
powered by renewables from 2020 onwards.
And no new or existing building with a Green Star rating should emit
carbon from operations by 2030.
We launched two critical documents at Green Cities recently. The first,
a vision document outlines our vision for the next version of Green
Star. The second is a two-page summary of our upcoming carbon positive
roadmap discussion paper.
We will be hosting a webinar on the 23 April. We’ll also be hosting
feedback sessions throughout the country in May and June to hear what
you have to say.
We’re in this together – and it’s only by working together that we’ll
realise this vision for a healthy, resilient and positive future.
--ENDS--
Source: Green Building Council of Australia - www.gbca.org.au
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