Sustainable building rating systems and high performance buildings

The current rate of consumption across Europe is leading to environmental problems. We need toreduce our impact to nature - our ecological footprint - by two thirds to achieve a sustainable andglobally equitable level. There is a strong need for more efficient and sustainable buildings. At present it is difficult to define the performance of buildings in an objective way to efficiency and sustainability. Goal of this project is to examine and to understand differences between different green building assessment rating systems approaches when applied to high performance buildings. To get some experience we started by analyzing 30 buildings from Germany and the Netherlands, after which we selected the best 3 of both countries for a more thorough comparison. In this way we were sure to have real high performance buildings.In total 6 buildings were compared and analyzed by using BREEAM, the ecological footprint,greencalc+ and LEED. The aim of the paper is to look if the current green building assessmentmethods are proper tools to use for the sustainable assessment of high performance buildings. These high performing buildings show that the assessment tools were not developed for such buildings which often have extreme design strategies as leading principles. As a result one should be careful with the interpretation of the out come of such assessment tools. Different tools give different results. However the possible trade of between sustainability and good indoor climate is not made in high performance buildings as both aspects have to be good. When focusing on these combined aspects there is a slight preference for LEED.