South Africa’s first voluntary green building rating tool, the Green Star SA – Office version one, was officially launched by the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) in Cape Town on Monday.

Addressing delegates at the first annual GBCSA convention and exhibition in Cape Town, GBCSA executive chairperson Bruce Kerswill explained that the new Green Star SA rating tool aimed to assess the environmental attributes of new commercial office buildings as well as major base building refurbishments of existing office facilities across South Africa.

The tool was designed to be used by building owners, developers, and consultants to influence the design of office facilities. Essentially, the tool enabled these stakeholders to minimise the environmental impacts on their developments and to capitalise on, and receive recognition for, their design initiatives.

GBCSA technical manager Jason Buch elaborated that the objectives of the Green Star SA rating tool were to reduce the environmental impact of development; to establish a common language for green building; to set benchmarks and standards of measurement; to promote integrated, whole-building design; and to raise awareness of green building benefits.

In this regard, the rating tool did not aspire to address the economics of green building, but the environmental impact of such property development.

Buch continued that the rating tool was not a design guide, but rather encouraged innovative design strategies and rewarded environmentally-friendly outcomes.

The Green Star SA rating tool consisted of eight environmental categories, including energy, indoor environment quality, management, transport, water, materials, land use and ecology, and emissions, as well as an innovation category.

Points were awarded within each of the categories based on the building’s potential to minimise its environmental impact in a range of key areas.

Buch said that developers were encouraged to undertake the rating process during the design stage as developers could market property as green star buildings, thus enabling a 10% premium on rentals.

Sustainability consultant Michelle Malanca, who helped manage the development of Green Star SA, explained that the new rating tool was based on the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star – Office Design version three rating tool.

Malanca said that there were a number of international green building rating tools in existence, including Leed in the United States and the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, in the United Kingdom.

However, Green Star was chosen as the best rating tool model because it was the easiest to customise to a South African context and because Australia and South Africa experienced similar environmental issues.

Malanca explained that every credit in the Australian system was analysed for appropriateness to the South African environment and property sector and all Australian reference standards and codes were reviewed and changed to South African or other international best practice standards where possible. 

In addition, credit thresholds were reviewed as to how hard the criteria would be for the South African market. 

It was important to keep the rigor of the internationally recognised rating system while not making it excessively hard for projects to receive points.

Malanca continued that the tool represented international best practice and was technically robst and completely applicable to the South African corporate sector and the environment.   

Buch concluded that designers and project developers were encouraged to register projects with the GBCSA’s Green Star SA programme towards the end of November.