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UK Green Building Council In The Pipeline

The Sustainable Building Task Group recommended that the various groups should form a single entity that would provide not only a much better conduit for dialogue with government but also a way of motivating the UK construction sector to start taking green buildings more seriously.

The proposed structure of the organisation will be similar to the US Green Building Council. The USGBC has been highly successful in galvanizing all sectors of the construction industry, from architects to contractors, throughout the United States.
Since the formation of the USGBC in 1993 there has been an explosion of interest amongst its 6500 members in the architectural and building professions. Designers and construction companies are specialising their services and only designing and building low environmental impact buildings. Also, the demand for "green" construction products is stimulating major competitor activity and innovation. This is resulting in the development of lower environmental impact products, often with higher recycled content.

The task of establishing the new UK Green Building Council seems to have been handed to Dr David Strong, Managing Director of BRE Environment who believes there is a real opportunity. "The whole prospect of establishing a UK Green Building Council is potentially hugely important but I don't underestimate the problems of getting such a thing off the ground. I've already had pledges of support from a number of organisations who all recognise the desperate need for an entity of this sort."

"I went along to the US Green Build Conference in Atlanta last year; there were over 10,000 delegates there, what they have achieved in the US is quite phenomenal. I believe there are real prospects for something similar to be established in the UK." 

The US Green Building Councils Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification has become a single and auditable benchmarking system in the US. LEED is based on BREEAM; the UK's building environmental assessment method. At the recent Sustainable Buildings 2005 conference in Tokyo BREEAM was awarded the prestigious 'Best Programme' award in recognition of its status as the most successfully executed programme for encouraging sustainable building practices and influencing other initiatives worldwide.

Dr Strong is hopeful the new Council will be formed in the near future. "We are in a much stronger starting position in the UK in that we have a very well established and robust environmental assessment method for buildings. There are now over 2000 trained assessors for BREEAM and EcoHomes across the country."

Commenting on the new proposals, Bill Gething, Chairman of the RIBA Sustainable Futures Group said: "What the industry does need is an organisation that pulls it together. This needs to be properly funded and to be proactive - to do things rather than merely talk about doing them. The entire building industry needs to buy into this; therefore it must be attractive and beneficial to them and give something back in return. If the UK Green Building Council is a way of achieving this it will be fantastic."

Once established the UK Green Building Council will join the ranks of the current World Green Building Council member countries of Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, Taiwan and the US. The World Green Building Council was established to share the latest technical knowledge and advancement of national green building information. 

The list of emerging member countries includes Brazil, Chile, Germany, Guatemala, Israel, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates. Visit www.worldgbc.org for more information.

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