Building Greenhouse Rating

Provides assessments of the greenhouse intensity of office buildings by awarding a star rating on a scale of one to five. Buildings identified by the Australian Building Greenhouse Rating scheme with a high star rating will be more energy efficient and cheaper to run, and will result in lower greenhouse gas emissions. Separate components of the building can be rated - a base building rating measures the performance of those services provided by the building manager/landlord; and a tenancy rating measures the services for which the tenant is responsible. A whole building rating measures the combined effect.

The software tool uses information gathered from the existing building to benchmark the energy performance against the national Australian property market. Building owners, managers, tenants and investors can use the tool to self assess to roughly ascertain their property's performance. An assessment performed by an ABGR Accredited Assessor will provide an official ABGR Performance Rating, which may then be used in marketing and promotional materials. Screen Shots

Keywords

operational energy, greenhouse performance, national benchmark

Validation/Testing

N/A

Expertise Required

For self assessment, no expert knowledge required. Official ratings can only be performed by trained Accredited Assessors.

Users

More than 2000 downloads and more than 200 official ratings (all Australia).

Audience

Australian property market stakeholders - Building owners, managers,tenants, investors, developers, designers.

Input

Requires building operational data - size in Net Lettable Area (NLA), location of the building, number of occupants, number of computers in regular use, number of hours per week that the building is occupied, and 12 months of billing data for all energy sources in the building. The user enters data via text inputs.

Output

Report on greenhouse rating (stars), normalised greenhouse emissions (kgCO2/m2) and energy consumption (MJ/m2). The report shows what the star rating of the building means in terms of actual performance against the national benchmark.

Computer Platform

Internet-based

Programming Language

Java

Strengths

Unique tool for providing insight into the actual energy and greenhouse performance of your office building against the national property market, enabling informed decision making on energy efficiency improvments. Useful for determining actual savings from implemented energy efficiency measures, by normalising the operational data for changes in usage patterns.

Weaknesses

Normalising curves available for Australian office buildings only - will not provide meaningful results for other building types or locations without further industry benchmarking.

Contact

Availability

Available as a free download from the web site.

Printable Version