Green building is cost-effective

1. Upfront investment in green building makes properties more valuable, with an average expected increase in value of 4 percent. By virtue of lowered maintenance and energy costs the return on investment from green building is rapid: green retrofit projects are generally expected to pay for itself in just seven years. 3

This document is the companion to parts 1 and 2 of the guidance on how to use Level(s). In part 1 a general introduction to Level(s) is provided, together with in Part 2 an overview of the macro-objectives, performance indicators and the three Levels of performance assessment (Level(s) - Part 1 and 2). The three Levels are:

Cities are increasingly taking actions such as building code enforcement, urban planning, and public transit expansion to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide in their communities and municipal operations. However, many cities lack the quantitative information needed to estimate policy impacts and prioritize city actions in terms of carbon abatement potential and cost effectiveness. This report fills this research gap by providing methodologies to assess the carbon abatement potential of a variety of city actions.

The original policy issued by The Science Council of Japan was in Japanese, and this English article summarises the policy that outlined a roadmap to realize a healthy low-carbon society. The aim of the policy is to build a low carbon footprint and high environmental performance. There are four parts as below: 

(1) Increasing motivation for new, healthy, low-carbon lifestyles and behavioral changes

Cities need to become ‘smarter’ if we are to save the planet. John Dora, editor of a special issue of ICE Engineering Sustainability journal on smart cities, says the ingenuity of civil engineers will be essential for their delivery.

This report is the Interim Technical Report for the Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project. It accompanies the Interim Synthesis Report for the Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project, entitled The Bottom Line – the household impacts of delaying improved energy requirements in the Building Code and which was published on the 8th of February 2018, providing more detail on the assumptions behind and the preliminary results from the underlying modelling work.

The report provides the following key items:

In 2017, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) developed its 2016 Stretch Code Supplement to the 2016 New York State Energy Conservation Construction Code. Since 2017, NYSERDA has continued to develop the 2018 edition, as part of the efforts to achieve a statewide Net Zero Energy Code by 2028.

This report is a product of the collaborative research project ‘Validating and Improving the BASIX Assessment Tool for Low-Carbon Dwellings’. Initiated by the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the New South Wales Government, this project addresses the policy need for post-occupancy evaluation of the BASIX tool by measuring the actual energy consumption of BASIX-compliant dwellings.