Green Star
The South African gold standard when it comes to sustainable buildings and places
Discover the versatility of the Green Star rating system, offering tools tailored to various building types and development scales, from interior fit-outs to expansive urban precincts and from existing structures to greenfield projects. Green Star supports sustainability across your project’s lifecycle, from initial designs and community development plans to construction and daily operations. Green Star covers a wide breadth of sustainability initiatives.
Why Choose Green Star?
- International Recognition: Green Star is globally acknowledged.
- Robust and Proven: Designed, tested, and trusted for the South African built environment.
- Holistic Approach: Comprehensive sustainability performance benchmarks.
- Versatile Application: Suitable for various project typologies, both new and existing buildings.
- Scalability: Certify a single project or multiple developments with ease.
- Future-Proof: Investing in sustainable practices and obtaining Green Star certification can future-proof your assets, ensuring they remain relevant and sustainable in an increasingly sustainably conscious world.
- Market Access: Green Star certification may provide access to markets and business opportunities that prioritise sustainability, such as green lease arrangements.
Green Star is unique in that it has a suite of tools that are appropriate for different stages in a building's life cycle.
Understanding Green Star Certification
Green Star certification follows a straightforward process:
- Meeting Minimum Requirements: To be eligible for Green Star certification, a project must satisfy specific minimum eligibility requirements.
- Achieve Credits: Projects earn points by achieving objectives in the Green Star credit categories. The total points earned determine the awarded Star rating.
The Green Star rating tools
Enabling tenants to build greener
The Green Star Interiors tool evaluates environmental attributes of interior fit-outs, and rewards spaces that are healthy, productive places to work and have a reduced environmental footprint. An additional benefit is that these spaces are generally less costly to operate and maintain. Ideal for office, hospitality, education, retail, and large volume projects such as branch roll-outs.
The foundation for a sustainable built environment.
This is a comprehensive tool for new buildings and major refurbishments, assessing them on design features at tender stage or at construction completion. A framework of 9 categories guides the assessment:
- Management
- Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ)
- Energy
- Transport
- Water
- Materials
- Land Use & Ecology
- Emissions
- Innovation
- Socio-Economic
Within this certification scope, we have specific tools developed for the following building typologies:
- Office
- Public & Education Building
- Retail
- Multi Unit Residential
- Industrial
- Hospitality
- Healthcare
- Mixed Use
- Custom which caters for anything not covered in the above
We are continuously enhancing this tool to align with global green building best practices. Keep an eye out for the upcoming release of Transforming Tomorrow, the New Build tool Version 2.
Enabling existing buildings to continually improve their sustainability performance.
The EBP tool aligns with the same environmental categories as the New Build tool, focusing on operations and management. Some Iinitiatives include:
- Energy and Water Management: Implementing policies, plans, and monitoring, with the option to use the GBCSA’s Energy Water Performance (EWP) tool for benchmarking. The EWP tool constitutes 40% of EBP Certification for office buildings. It is a user-friendly, freely available tool that can benchmark your office building energy and water performance against its peers. Find it here. EWP forms part of EBPs for offices, or it can be a stand-alone certification.
- Indoor Environment Quality: Enhancing occupant experience through factors like lighting, acoustics, and temperature optimization.
- Tenant-Landlord Relations: Encouraging win-win situations, facilitated by tools like the Green Lease Toolkit.
The EBP rating is valid for a cycle of three years, promoting continual improvement.
Guiding the development of sustainable buildings at urban scale
The Green Star SUP tool assesses the environmental performance of large-scale precinct and neighbourhood development during the planning, design, and construction phases. The SUP tool provides a rigorous and holistic rating across five categories. As large scale developments are complex, with development taking place in phases, these projects can take time to deliver. For this reason, certification lasts a maximum of five years, after which the project can recertify .
The SUP tool is ideal for master-planned projects, and is best utilized from the early stages of development.
As a guiding framework, it serves as a vision and a set of principles to foster sustainable community development. The tool’s unique credits focus on site development and stakeholder engagement.
Please note that this tool does not evaluate individual buildings or their operation.
GBCSA also certifies projects throughout Africa. Visit our Green Star Africa page to find out more.
Green Star Features
The Green Star tool comprises nine categories, each focusing on various environmental and sustainability facets in building design, construction, and operation.
Within each category, multiple credits target specific green building aspects and actions, each assigned a certain number of points. Accredited Professionals guide project teams in selecting and pursuing specific credits within these categories. After assessment, the targeted credits contribute to the overall project score.
Green buildings connect building users to public and mass transport easily, and support walking, cycling, and other types of movement that don’t use fossil fuels, to reduce emissions from vehicle use.
Materials
Green materials used for green buildings are sourced as locally and ethically as possible, used and re-used efficiently and have low embodied carbon, while still performing excellently as construction components.
Water
Aims to reduce overall water used by a project, and make sure that different water needs are supplied by sensible sources, such as efficient re-use and rainwater harvesting for non-potable requirements. Reducing the use of potable water can be achieved through the design of efficient systems, rainwater collection and water reuse.
Innovation
Green Innovation writes the sustainability script of the future. This is about implementing new techniques and technologies, and reaching new heights of industry best-practice.
Indoor Environment
Quality (IEQ)
Encourage the well-being of the occupants through addressing heating, cooling, lighting and indoor air pollutants. They are a comfortable temperature, well-lit, with daylight where possible, and well ventilated.
Energy
Aims to reduce overall energy consumption from centralised energy generation, without decreasing building functionality. This results in reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
Socio-Economic
Greening is for everyone, and sustainable projects are ultimately projects that benefit people. The Socio-Economic lens for green building is about improving some element of the socio-economic conditions around, or in some way connected to a project.
Emissions
Green emissions control recognises that both new and existing buildings are responsible for significant contributions to climate change and pollution, through the greenhouse gases and other contaminants they release. Green emissions control seeks to reduce that contribution as much as possible, to do the least harm.
Land Use & Ecology
Promote initiatives that improve or reduce the building’s impact on ecological systems and biodiversity.
Management
Promotes the adoption of environmental principles from project inception, through design and construction, right through to the ongoing operation of the building. This also applies to the users and how they interact with the building.
Transport
Connects building users to public and mass transport easily, and supports walking, cycling and other types of movement that don’t use fossil fuels, to reduce emissions from private vehicle use.
Measuring sustainability performance with Green Star
1
Star
to a better,
greener building
2
Star
to a better,
greener building
3
Star
Good
practice
4
Star
Best
practice
5
Star
South African
excellence
6
Star
World
leadership
How to certify a Green Star Project
The certification process commences with the decision to register your project, running in parallel with the building design and operational stages. It’s highly recommended to engage an Accredited Professional and register your project as early as feasible in the design phase
The Certification Process
1
Decide which rating tool to use to certify your project with
2
Appoint an Accredited Professional (AP) who is qualified in your rating tool.
3
Register your project with GBCSA through our online platform.
4
Submit your documentation: Your AP will do this. Depending on the tool, submission stages and information requirements will vary.
5
Get your project certified: Our independent panel of sustainability experts will assess your submission and/or confirm certification.
6
Promote your achievement: Once certified you will receive your certificate and building plaque, and be ready to celebrate your achievement!
