SDO: Green Building Initiative
Emily Marx
Associate Director of Standards and Program Support
7805 S.W. 40th #80010
Portland, OR 97219
Phone: 503.274.0448 x103
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://thegbi.org/
Organizational Overview
Green Building Initiative (GBI) is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing climate impacts by improving the built environment by delivering education, standards, assessments, and certifications through an inclusive and global community. Founded in 2004, our strategy for accomplishing our goals involves education and promotion on the use of GBI’s Green Globes certification program for commercial buildings and GBI’s Guiding Principles Compliance and third-party assessment program for federal building sustainability requirements. Through careful investment of its resources, GBI is advancing toward a global governance and membership structure with tools and services in multiple languages for increased global impact. GBI makes aspirational goals achievable through user-friendly tools built upon comprehensive standards and supported by outstanding staff and expert assessors.
In 2005, GBI became the first ANSI Accredited Standards Developer to apply the ANSI process to its development of commercial building rating systems. GBI earned ANSI approval in 2010 for GBI’s first American National Standard, ANSI/GBI 01-2010, Green Building Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings. The standard was used as the basis for GBI’s Green Globes for New Construction program, and later it was updated and released in 2019 and again in 2021 as ANSI/GBI 01-2021, Green Globes Assessment Protocol for Design, New Construction, and Major Renovations, or more commonly, Green Globes for New Construction (NC) 2021. GBI’s second standard, ANSI/GBI 02-2023, Green Globes Assessment Protocol for Existing Buildings (Green Globes for Existing Buildings (EB) 2023) was published in the summer of 2023. Both standards are under continuous maintenance every two years to reflect market advancements.
Scope of Standards Developing Activity
ANSI/GBI 01-2021, Green Globes Assessment Protocol for Design, New Construction, and Major Renovations provides a method for assessing new construction or major renovations of commercial buildings. ANSI/GBI 02-2023, Green Globes Assessment Protocol for Existing Buildings provides a method for assessing existing commercial buildings.
Both standards are based heavily on the tenets of integrated design and contemporary best practices for high-performance green buildings. The assessment methods of both standards address the evaluation of buildings with respect to reducing life cycle resource consumption, waste, and global/regional/local environmental impacts contributing to human and ecological system health and provides performance feedback to owners and communities on indicators such as energy and water performance.
ANSI/GBI 01-2021 and ANSI/GBI 02-2023 apply to a broad range of commercial building types, including offices, multifamily, health care, schools, universities, labs, industrial, retail, data centers, etc. GBI’s Standards are points-based assessment rating systems that allow users to identify solutions that earn points for actions likely to achieve levels of performance commonly valued as having desirable environmental and related efficiency outcomes..
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