Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser

Critical review and methodological approach to evaluate the differences MARK

among international green building rating tools
⁎
B. Mattonia, C. Guattarib, L. Evangelistib,c, F. Bisegnaa, P. Gorib, F. Asdrubalib,
a
Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Eudossiana, 18, 00184 Rome, Italy
b
Department of Engineering, Roma TRE University, Via Vito Volterra, 62, 00146 Rome, Italy
c
Department of Engineering, Niccolò Cusano University, Via Don Carlo Gnocchi, 3, 00166 Rome, Italy

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Building performances play a fundamental role in the worldwide energy scenario. In the last years, many
Sustainability countries have developed certification procedures in order to rate the environmental sustainability of buildings,
Green buildings aiming at reducing energy consumptions and environmental impacts during the construction, management and
Rating tools operational phases of a building.
Methodological approach
This study firstly provides an overview of the different certification procedures employed in several countries
all over the world, considering also which Green Building Rating System (GBRS) is only applied in its own
country and which one is developed in other countries by means of proper adaptations. Five widespread and well
known green building rating systems (CASBEE, Green Star, BREEAM, LEED and ITACA) are then analyzed in
detail and differences and similarities among them are highlighted. To this aim, six new macro-areas (site, water,
energy, comfort and safety, materials and outdoor quality) are defined and a normalization procedure is im-
plemented, in order to provide significant information about the sustainability aspects taken into account in the
different rating tools and aiming at comparing them. This comparison allows to identify the main features of the
five tools and to highlight qualitative and quantitative differences. The analysis shows that the certification tools
are not homogeneous from both points of view.
The aim of this work is to understand which issues have more influence on the final performance rate of each
system and to give to final users a deeper knowledge of the aspects included in these tools.

1. Introduction fundamental to evaluate competing alternatives when a selection of

The world global energy consumption has been continuously
growing in the last years and it seems that this growth will continue at
least in the near future [1]. It is well known that in developed countries
the building sector is responsible of about 40% of the total energy use
[2]. As a result, increasing buildings energy efficiency is a primary goal
[3–5] and many solutions have been studied and suggested in order to
improve this aspect [6–8]. Indeed, energy-labelling procedures were
developed by various countries in order to assess buildings energy
performance [9–12]. Besides the fact that increasing energy efficiency
is one of the most important issues for governments, there is the need to
assess building performance from a broader perspective, taking into
account also the environmental, social, and economic impacts of con-
structions. The concept of sustainable development, which dates back
to the ’70 s [13], has become increasingly important in recent years,
embracing several different fields and being applied to widely different
territorial scales. As a matter of fact, a measure of sustainability is
materials, energy resources, production processes design choices, lo-
cations for building placement has to be performed [14]. In this fra-
mework, the concept of green building has come to light and many
definitions can be found in literature. For instance, Kibert defined a
green building as: “… healthy facilities, designed and built in a re-
source-efficient manner, using ecologically based principles” (p. 9)
[15]. According to Robichaud and Anantamula, there are four pillars of
green buildings: the minimization of environmental impact, the en-
hancement of health conditions of building users, the economical re-
turns to investors and local community, the life cycle impacts on the
planning, development and operational phases [16].
In this context, in order to estimate buildings sustainability level,
the so-called green rating systems were developed in the last years.
While energy efficiency labelling is generally mandatory, sustainability
labelling is still mostly made on a voluntary basis.
They consist in methodological approaches able to evaluate the
environmental sustainability of buildings by analyzing their energy

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: francesco.asdrubali@uniroma3.it (F. Asdrubali).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.09.105
Received 29 April 2017; Received in revised form 20 July 2017; Accepted 26 September 2017
Available online 07 October 2017
1364-0321/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
B. Mattoni et al.
Fig. 1. A global map of Green Building labelling systems.
consumptions, the characteristics of the site, the indoor well-being and
the effects on human health. In these tools, energy efficiency is actually
one of the main ingredients [17] but energy efficiency and sustain-
ability may be also conflicting [18,19].
Starting from the different characteristics, objectives and standards
requirements of each country worldwide, several green rating systems
were accordingly developed.
Two kinds of approaches have been followed for implementing the
rating systems [20]. The first one is based on a multi-criteria credit
system: a certain amount of credits within a prescribed range is as-
signed to each issue/topic in a set of specific categories that are con-
sidered to have an impact on the overall building sustainability. The
second approach is based on synthetic environmental indicators quan-
tified by means of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure. The latter
procedure is a scientific method to assess the environmental impact of
buildings, but it is more complex and onerous than the criteria-based
system. The most widespread Green Building Rating systems are
therefore based on the multi-criteria approach.
Both international and national rating tools have been developed
worldwide (Fig. 1). The most famous and widespread international tool
is LEED (USA) [21], which has been also declined into many national
versions; Green Star (Australia) [22] is also quite famous and it has
been customized with national versions in New Zealand and South
Africa; other examples are BREEAM [23], Arge TQ [24], Minergie [25],
Green Globes [26]. Example of national tools also provided with an
English version are CASBEE in Japan [27], DGNB in Germany [28],
Green Pyramid in Egypt [29]; finally national tools only available in the
language of the original country are for example ITACA Protocol in
Italy [30] and Haute Qualité Environmentale, HQE, in France [31].
Alternative systems to the most famous protocols often coexist in var-
ious countries (as in USA, Canada, Germany).
Building sustainability can be assessed by means of several labelling
tools, which are characterized by different calculation methods, credits,
weights and issues taken into account in each of these protocols. These
differences can highly impact on the final scores, which result to be
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Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960
very different from each other [32,33]. It is also worthy to notice that
the green building rating tools are defined according to local climatic
and geographic conditions [2] and these differences are the con-
sequence of the adaptation of sustainability concept at a local level. In
fact, as stated in [34] and [35], the weights of well-known green
building assessment tools cannot be globally applied since they may not
be suitable for each specific country. But, in the globalized world, the
buildings sustainability level should be hopefully comparable among
different countries in spite of their distinctive features. The energy ef-
ficiency concept is applied at a local level with different strategies ac-
cording to climatic, cultural and geographical conditions, but the pillars
and targets on which this topic is based should be worldwide shared.
Similarly, the sustainability concept is declined in each country as
needed, but it is also necessary to define the boundaries of the eva-
luation of this “local” sustainability [36]. At present, common topics
have not been yet defined at a global level and huge differences do exist
among the green protocols, so that a building which is assessed as
“green” in one country can achieve a low sustainability score in another
country.
As highlighted in [37–39], most of these labelling tools lack im-
portant indicators which can be used to assess the sustainable perfor-
mance of building envelopes such as material efficiency, economic ef-
ficiency and indicators based on life time parameters (life cycle cost,
embodied energy etc.). Thus, there is the need to identify the most
appropriate sustainability indicators which can incorporate the most
relevant sustainable issues and make them adaptable for different local
situations in terms of specific credits and weights. This would allow to
define the pillars of the “global” sustainability concept, which should be
worldwide recognized, and, at the same time, to adjust them to each
country, in order to assess sustainability performance at a “local” level.
In [38] a questionnaire survey was carried out with public and pro-
fessional experts for identifying common sustainable energy perfor-
mance indicators for residential building envelope. These results cor-
roborate findings from the reviewed literature indicating that
sustainable performance has to be appraised by integrating a huge
B. Mattoni et al.
number of different sustainability factors which have to be general
enough to cover all the topics but also suitable to be adapted to local
situations.
In this paper, the same global approach is used to compare in-
dicators included in existing green building protocols, to point out from
them the most and less common sustainability issues and to identify the
most relevant factors which should be added in all the protocols being
the baseline of a global sustainability language. Differently from pre-
vious studies, in this paper the analysis of the rating tools will be per-
formed by applying a methodological approach which allows to over-
come the differences in terms of weight and distribution of the credits
in the protocols and consequently to make these tools comparable.
Differences and similarities among the following well-known rating
systems will be investigated: Istituto per l'innovazione e Trasparenza
degli Appalti e la Compatibilità Ambientale (ITACA, in English:
Institute for Transparency of Contracts and Environmental
Compatibility, Italy) protocol [30], the Leadership in Energy and En-
vironmental Design (LEED, US) [21], Building Research Establishment
Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM, United Kingdom) [23],
Green Star (Australia) [22] and Comprehensive Assessment System for
Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE, Japan) [27]. The original
and latest editions of these rating systems were taken into account and
only residential buildings were considered. In particular, these five
rating systems were chosen because they are internationally applied
and recognized as reliable, or because they are representative of im-
portant countries. These labelling systems can be considered as the
most spread and well known around the world and they were analyzed
in order to highlight the fundamental issues for the sustainability
analysis. This would allow to understand which factors most influence
the final performance rate of each system and to provide useful sug-
gestions for improving the existing tools.
This review aims at:
• comparing five-widespread green building rating systems by means
of a methodological approach based on the definition of macro-ag-
gregation areas, in order to highlight how the sustainability concept
is adopted by different countries; identifying and selecting the main
aspects which should be included in all the protocols as the baseline
of a global sustainability concept. These suggestions aim at under-
standing how to reduce the dissimilarities among the rating systems,
in order to define a common “sustainability language”, which would
offer a useful guidance for practitioners to identify the significant
factors for a more complete and integrated assessment of the sus-
tainability performance of buildings, and for regulatory authorities
to continuously improve the rating systems.
The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 shows the state of
the art of the international research and applications of GBRSs. The five
analyzed GBRSs are briefly described in Section 3. Section 4 provides
the comparison among the tools and their own characteristics. In
Section 5, the proposed methodological approach is described. This
section is followed by a concluding paragraph to summarize the main
findings from the critical review and the methodological approach.
2. State of the art
In literature, many studies have been developed comparing and
analyzing various green building rating tools, in order to identify dif-
ferences and similarities among them [40–44]. The significant number
of recent studies proves that the topic is relevant for researchers from
all over the world [45]. In this Section, only the researches related to
LEED, CASBEE, ITACA, GREEN STAR and BREEAM are described and
analyzed. In their study, Nguyen and Altan [46] made a comparative
review of five sustainable rating systems, taking into account BREEAM,
LEED, CASBEE, GREEN STAR and HK-BEAM. The main goal of this
study was to analyze these tools according to 9 criteria (popularity,
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Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960
availability, applicability, user-friendliness etc.) in order to identify the
best one(s). The authors affirmed that BREEAM and LEED achieved the
best score, followed by CASBEE, HK-BEAM and finally GREEN STAR.
Green Star resulted to be the worst in the ranking: in particular, it
obtained the lowest scores in “Popularity and influence”, “Accuracy and
verification” and “Results Presentation” criteria. Aotake et al. [47]
applied CASBEE, BREEAM and LEED to analyze an office building re-
built after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, occurred in 1995. The
results revealed that the trends of each assessment results are com-
parable among the three rating systems. The similarities and the dif-
ferences of several assessment methods have been also analyzed by
Kawazu et al. [48]: the authors compared BREEAM, LEED, GBTOOL
and CASBEE applying them to three high-performance buildings and
one low-performance building, in order to point out the characteristics
of each assessment method. The authors concluded that the calculation
results of a high-performance building are characterized by a compar-
able trend. Moreover, the authors stated that higher scores have been
achieved using BREEAM and CASBEE compared to LEED and GBTool.
In their study, Roderick et al. [49] compared three rating systems
(LEED, BREEAM and Green star) with regards to the energy perfor-
mance assessment, by applying the different evaluation tools to a ty-
pical office building. It was found that the case study received a high-
energy rating score by using Green Star and a low score by applying
BREEAM; on the contrary, the certification rate using the LEED scheme
was not achieved. This analysis revealed that the building performance
can significantly change depending on the assessment tool. In [50],
Illankoon et al. have critically compared LEED, BREEAM, CASBEE and
Green Star for identifying which are the most widely applied key credit
criteria providing useful suggestions to improve the existing tools. Wei
et al. [51] reviewed 55 green building rating systems in order to define
how and to what extent Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is taken into account
in these protocols. IAQ is included in all the green building certifica-
tions as a fundamental factor for assessing the health risk for indoor
occupants and the contribution of IAQ in green building certification is
almost the same in all the analyzed certification tools. The authors also
suggested that more transparency should be guaranteed to allow the
comparison and normalization of green building schemes, in order to
harmonize the different approaches used worldwide. In [52] a review of
the various passive design strategies adopted by five green protocols
(BREEAM, LEED, CASBEE, BEAM plus and GBL-ASGB) was performed.
It was stated that passive design strategies are not granted the same
importance as a traditional whole building energy simulation approach
for most of the tools analyzed and LEED even penalizes the passive
design by reducing the available credits. Furthermore, the passive
strategies are not accurately defined; finally, the different weightings
given by each protocol to the strategies are not based on their relative
influence on environmental quality or energy use. As a consequence,
more appropriate weighting systems to enable comparison of different
passive strategies among the different systems should be incorporated
in green building rating tools.
Many sustainable rating systems also allow to assess the perfor-
mance of neighborhood and cities. Haapio [53] analyzed three well-
known tools: BREEAM Communities, CASBEE for Urban Development
and LEED for Neighborhood Development. Haapio identified 7 cate-
gories in which the criteria of the urban assessment tools have been
divided in order to make a comparison among them. The author
highlighted that the most important category within CASBEE for Urban
Development and LEED for Neighborhood Development is “Infra-
structure”, while in BREEAM Communities the most stressed categories
are “Infrastructure” and “Transportation”. Taking into account all these
tools, “Infrastructure” category is the most significant (35%), followed
by “Ecology” (20%), “Resources and energy” (16%), and “Transporta-
tion” (14%). “Well-being” category was not considered as a relevant
aspect within the tools: in fact, only CASBEE for Urban Development
has few criteria in this category. In [54] the similarities, differences,
strengths, and weaknesses of four green building tools were analyzed on
B. Mattoni et al.
the basis of the research manuals. The detailed characteristics of each
tool were studied to assess the main tendencies of the green building
rating systems. In [55] the best practices and main principles of LEED
and BREEAM are discussed for defining a sustainable procedure to be
applied in Latvia and Baltics. In [56] green sustainability issues in
several protocols were investigated for proposing a new set of factors
for assessing green buildings performance of offices in Iran. According
to the results of previous studies, GBRSs are actually quite different in
terms of assessment schemes, criteria and weights, methods for per-
formance evaluations and for the achievement of the final scores
[55,57].
Also Reed et al. [58] highlighted that, when assessing the sustain-
ability level of a building using different green tools, there are high
variations in the final scores due to the different calculation methods
and credits. In the era of globalization, it should be possible to directly
compare the buildings sustainability level in different countries despite
their specific characteristics. According to this, a global set of “bench-
mark” parameters, recognized as effective and useful for the highest
number of countries, should be defined.
In [59] a methodology for developing a comparative analysis of
waste management requirements among five building rating tools was
carried out. This approach is based on the relative significance index
(RSI) and allowed to pinpoint which system treats construction waste
problem most significantly, while, at the other extreme, which is the
system that lays least emphasis to this topic.
Differently from [59], in order to identify common macro-areas
among different labelling tools, Asdrubali et al. [60] developed a model
based on the definition of new five common categories (site, water,
energy, materials, and indoor environmental quality) in which the
credits of the protocols were redistributed and normalized. In their
work, ITACA and LEED were compared. These rating systems were
applied to two residential green buildings located in central Italy. On
the basis of this approach, Bisegna et al. [17], deepened and im-
plemented this method. ITACA and LEED were applied to an Italian
sustainable residential building and the impacts of different insulating
materials on the certification results were compared on the basis of the
five macro-areas. The analysis suggested that ITACA and LEED proce-
dures could be optimized by taking into account more significantly the
effect of thermal and environmental properties of insulating materials.
In this framework, starting from the effectiveness of the methodo-
logical approach used in the previous works [17,60] and considering
the significant differences discovered between ITACA and LEED pro-
cedures, the additional aim of this review is to test the possibility of
extending the use of the five categories also to other international
certification systems. According to this, it is also possible to identify
similarities and differences among the labelling tools, in order to
highlight the most common and least widespread criteria for green
assessment and to evaluate how the sustainability concept is expressed.
In particular, in this paper residential buildings were analyzed and only
the versions of each protocol related to this type of building were
considered and compared. The latest editions of each rating tool are
customized according to the different life cycle stages (such as design
stage, construction stage, post-construction stage) and for different
building uses. This distinction is useful since it allows to properly take
into account the specific characteristics of each kind of building. Such a
wide applicative context, however, makes it difficult to compare dif-
ferent rating systems. For this reason, in this work the focus has been
made on residential buildings new construction, for which the pertinent
credits included in each GBRS have been collected and distributed into
new macro-areas.
3. Sustainability rating system description
In this Section, the five green building rating systems analyzed in
detail are shortly described.
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Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960
3.1. LEED
This protocol, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council is one
of the most famous programs for assessing sustainability for different
building phases: the design, construction, maintenance and operation.
The last version of LEED (2013) was built on the basis of the previous
one (LEED 2009). The number of criteria was increased and the tools
for performance calculation were standardized, in order to make the
protocol suitable for different contexts around the world.
The protocol is divided into nine basic areas that address key aspects
of green buildings. These areas are the same for all the project types and
are made up of credits/points. The maximum number of achievable
point is 100 but 10 extra points can be obtained in the “Innovation” and
“Regional priority” categories. Based on the number of points achieved,
it is possible to earn one of the LEED rating levels: LEED Platinum (80+
points), LEED Gold (from 60 to 79 points), LEED Silver (from 50 to 59
points) and LEED Certified (from 40 to 49 points).
3.2. ITACA
In Italy, the Sustainable Building Council (SBC) association devel-
oped the ITACA protocol, a national labelling system for buildings en-
vironmental sustainability. This procedure allows to assess buildings of
different intended uses in all their life cycle phases. Many Italian re-
gions have customized the national system version, adapting it to the
local features. The latest version of the national protocol is still under
development. Nowadays, the most recent available version of ITACA for
residential building is the regional one called “ITACA – Lazio 2014” and
this is the one studied in this paper. The maximum number of achiev-
able point is 100. The system can be applied to building construction,
refurbishment and operation phases. The tool is divided into 5 macro-
areas. The building evaluation range is composed of 7 levels, from the
value −1 (performance lower than the standard) to 5 (advanced per-
formance). In this evaluation range, the value 0 corresponds to the
“current practice”, which can be explained as the minimum acceptable
performance defined by the laws. The value 3 corresponds to the “best
practice”, which represents a significant improvement compared to
existing regulations and common practice.
3.3. Green Star
Green Star is one of the most followed voluntary building en-
vironmental assessment tools, developed by the Green Building Council
of Australia GBCA. The latest version was launched in 2016. The system
evaluates the environmental design and achievements of buildings,
considering a broad range of issues. The system can be applied to
building construction, refurbishment and operation phases. The scheme
is based on a rating system of collecting credits and it is applicable to a
wide range of building types, both new buildings and existing buildings.
For each credit, which is allocated into its specific category, a maximum
number of points can be achieved. The maximum number of achievable
point is 100, distributed among 8 macro-areas. The certification is ex-
pressed as a number of stars: 1–3 Stars (from 10 to 44 points) corre-
spond respectively to Minimum Practice, Average Practice and Good
Practice; 4 Stars (from 45 to 59 points) correspond to the Best practice
score achievement; 5 Stars (from 60 to 75) is the Australian Excellence
Level and finally more than 75 points allows to obtain the 6 stars rating,
that is the World leadership grade.
3.4. BREEAM
Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment
Method for buildings (BREEAM) is the oldest protocol. The most recent
version was developed in 2016. Initially, it was based on the con-
struction phase of individual new buildings, now it covers the entire life
cycle of buildings, starting from the design stage, to in-use and
B. Mattoni et al.
retrofitting. This protocol takes into account and analyzes 9 different
macro-areas, reaching a maximum achievable score dependent on the
building uses. Each macro-area is composed by various credits.
Furthermore, an additional 1% up to 10% for each “innovation credit”
can be added to the final BREEAM score. Starting from the final score
achieved, it is possible to earn one of the following rating levels:
Unclassified (< 30 points), Pass (≥ 30 points), Good (≥ 45 points),
Very good (≥ 55 points), Excellent (≥ 70 points) and Outstanding (≥
85 points).
3.5. CASBEE
Japan grounds its sustainability assessment on CASBEE rating
system. The latest version was developed in 2014 and it can be applied
to construction, refurbishment and operational phases of the buildings.
It is based on the “Building Environmental Quality & Performance”
(simply called “Quality” and specified with the letter Q) and the
“Building Environmental Loadings” (just called “Loadings” and speci-
fied with the letter L). In particular, Q takes into account the im-
provement of the building indoor life conditions and L analyzes the
environmental impacts of the building, supposing a hypothetical peri-
meter placed around the analyzed building and its own external spaces.
Q and L are both divided into 3 macro-areas. The CASBEE main goal is
related to energy efficiency by means of the “Building Environmental
Efficiency” (BEE) indicator (calculated as the Q/L ratio). The CASBEE
assessment is categorized through five ratings: Superior (S), Very Good
(A), Good (B+), Slightly Poor (B-) and Poor (C).
For each certification tool, only the version related to residential
buildings was taken into account (LEEDv4 for Homes, ITACA-Lazio
2014, Green Star-Design and as Built Residential, BREEAM-New
Construction Residential and CASBEE for Buildings-New Residential
Construction). Fig. 2 shows the original macro-areas, credits and points
distribution for the studied tools.
4. Green building rating systems comparison
The comparison among the different green building rating systems
described in Section 3 was carried out in order to highlight similarities
and differences in the approach. In the following analysis “credit”
means each issue taken into account in each macro area and char-
acterized by a certain amount of points; “weight” stands for the im-
portance given to each credit; “score” represents the sum of the total
credit points, which have been previously multiplied for their specific
weights. As mentioned, each tool is characterized by credits achievable
on the basis of the building characteristics in specific areas and each
rating system allows to obtain a building labelling, according to the
reached total score. It is worthy to notice that each certification system
is characterized by a specific points’ total amount and is distinguished
by a precise number of reachable credits. Fig. 3 shows the rating sys-
tems categories and in this methodological analysis only the credits
related to the new residential buildings were considered. LEED and
Green Star allow to calculate the credits of each category by means of
two alternative methods: the prescriptive path and the performance path.
Only the credits achievable by using the performance path were con-
sidered since it permits to obtain the maximum score. Furthermore, the
credits included in the Innovation category of each protocol, which
allow to get up to 10 extra points, were not considered in the analysis.
Regarding the maximum achievable total score, ITACA is characterized
by percentage points, with a total equal to 100%. “Resource con-
sumption” is the heaviest assessment area, characterized by a weight
equal to 60%. LEED provides 100 total points. Its heaviest category is
“Energy and Atmosphere”. Green Star also gives the possibility to
achieve 100 total points. Fig. 3 points out the importance given to its
different categories, highlighting that “Energy” is the heaviest one.
BREEAM has 134 total points, obtained excluding the non-residential
building items [23]. Fig. 3 shows that “Energy” is the heaviest category
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Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960
in BREEAM. As mentioned before, CASBEE is based on the “Building
Environmental Quality & Performance” (Q) and the “Building Environ-
mental Loadings” (L), whose ratio allows to obtain the BEE indicator. Q
and L are composed by subcategories which are in turn made up of
credits. Each of these subsystems has a different weight. The maximum
achievable score of Q and L is 5 points for each of the two. In order to
make a comparison among the GBRSs, Q and L (composed in turn by
their sub-categories) were considered as two macro-areas, whose points
can be summed such as for the other rating systems. Due to this, C-
ASBEE is characterized by 10 total points and the heaviest categories
are “Indoor Environment” (Q1) and “Energy” (LR1), as shown in Fig. 3.
5. Macro-aggregation approach
Starting from previous studies, [17,60] in which ITACA and the
Italian version of LEED were compared by means of 5 macro-areas (Site,
Water, Materials, Energy and Indoor environmental quality), in this
work the extension to five green building rating systems evidenced the
necessity of introducing a sixth new macro-area called “Outdoor
quality”. In addition, Indoor environmental quality was modified and
renamed as “Comfort and safety”, since several aspects related to
seismic and indoor security were added. The outdoor quality issue was
not considered in the previous works and the environmental aspects in
terms of pollutants emissions and global warming were included in the
“Site” category of the two certification tools. On the contrary, in the five
protocols analyzed in this paper, many credits focus on the outdoor
environmental aspects and more attention is payed to these issues,
compared to ITACA and the Italian LEED version. Furthermore, two
different types of environmental effects can be identified: the first one
related to the influence of the site characteristics on the building (“Site”
category), and the second one referred to the building impacts on the
outdoor environment, both during the construction and operational
phases, (“Outdoor quality” category). For these two reasons, two se-
parated macro-areas were created. Moreover, the “Management” cate-
gory (which is included in LEED, BREEAM and Green Star) was not
taken into account because it includes bureaucratic and administrative
aspects, which do not match with the purpose of this study. Finally, no
extra-points award related to Innovative design aspects (which are in-
cluded in LEED, BREEAM, Green Star and ITACA) were taken into ac-
count. Table 1 lists and describes the six proposed macro-aggregation
areas.
Starting from the original categories, all credits of the examined
rating tools were analyzed and assigned to the six new macro-areas.
Fig. 4 shows the new distribution of the credits. In order to qualitatively
compare the rating tools, in Table 2 the main features of each macro-
area are listed, together with the information on their inclusion in each
of the considered protocols.
It is possible to observe that “Site” area takes into account several
aspects related to preservation and conservation of biological species
and local environmental features, natural hazards and risks associated
to the site characteristics, site amenities and the influence of the urban
design on the building. The five labelling systems take into account all
these aspects, except for the natural hazard and risks, which are con-
sidered only in BREEAM and Green Star. “Water” area includes the
water uses and monitoring, rain and grey water recycling systems.
These aspects are included in all the rating tools. “Energy” area pro-
vides aspects related to the heating and cooling loads control, energy
monitoring, renewable energy production and storage systems. As for
the Energy category, these aspects are included in all the rating tools
and the five calculation methods are practically in agreement. This is
due to the common final goal related to the energy saving and conse-
quently the significance of this issue in terms of sustainable develop-
ment. “Comfort and safety” area takes into account thermal, visual and
acoustic comfort, air quality, ventilation and indoor pollutants, which
are all related to the indoor quality. Only LEED does not assess the
visual and acoustic aspects. In addition, in CASBEE, BREEAM and
B. Mattoni et al.
Fig. 2. Original macro-areas, credits and points distribution of the five green building rating systems.
ITACA the building amenities, flexibility and functional adaptability are
included in this area. In particular, BREEAM awards the possibility of
providing residence with spaces and services to make people able to
work at home. This aspect is strongly related to sustainability since
allows reducing work-related travels. Furthermore, in CASBEE, due to
Japan’s geological characteristics, the seismic and security aspects are
evaluated. The eco-friendly materials use, recycled materials and low
carbon emission materials are analyzed in “Materials” area. Moreover,
Green Star, BREEAM and LEED take into account the construction and
demolition waste management. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as-
pects are considered only by Green Star and BREEAM. Regarding the
“Outdoor quality” category only the sustainable transport and mobility
aspects are common to the five rating systems. This macro-area also
includes the building influences on global warming, heat island effect,
light and noise pollution, NOx and CO2 emissions, but only CASBEE
takes into account all of these aspects. Finally, the operational waste
management is considered only by BREEAM, CASBEE and Green Star.
On the other hand, in order to quantitatively compare the green
building rating systems among each other, it was necessary to nor-
malize all the scores. Differently from the others, CASBEE is char-
acterized by a total amount of 10 points, deriving from the sum of the
original Q and L areas, which are made up of maximum 5 points each.
In particular, both of them are divided into three subcategories, which
are in turn characterized by different credits weighted by means of
specific coefficients (see Fig. 2). The normalization procedure also in
this case allows to convert the 10 points into 100, by multiplying all the
scores by a coefficient equal to 10, as it can be seen in Fig. 5.
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Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960
Regarding the other rating systems, as mentioned in Section 4, the
original “Management” category provided by BREEAM, LEED and
Green Star was not taken into account. According to this, the new scores
of these tools need to be normalized on the basis of 100. ITACA does not
need any normalization since its score is already distributed over 100
points. Table 3 shows both the original and the normalized scores on
the basis of 100 of each green rating tool.
Fig. 6 qualitatively represents and analyzes the importance of each
category. It is worthy to highlight that the number of credits is not the
only parameter that influences the significance of each category. In fact,
also the weight given to the credits greatly impacts on the macro-area
final significance. Fig. 6 shows that the final score of ITACA is mostly
influenced by “Energy” and “Comfort and safety” categories, which
include both the highest number of credits and the heaviest ones. Si-
milarly, LEED gives the highest importance to “Energy” although this
category includes a lower number of credits compared to the others
macro-areas. BREEAM gives the highest importance to “Energy” cate-
gory, followed by “Site”. In CASBEE “Comfort and safety” category is
the one that mostly influences the final score, being the heaviest in
terms of credits weight and having the highest number of credits.
Moreover, this protocol takes much more into consideration “Outdoor
Quality” category compared to the other four rating systems. All the
macro-areas in Green star are homogeneously weighted, except for
“Site”, which has the lowest impact on the final score, and for “Energy”
which is the most significant. The “Water” macro-area is the less con-
sidered by the five analyzed rating systems, followed by “Materials”
and “Outdoor quality”.
B. Mattoni et al.
Fig. 3. Green building rating tools original areas and points.
Table 1
Description of the new six macro-areas.
Site Influence of the site characteristics and location on the
building
Water Total water use
Materials Use and impacts of building materials from cradle to grave
Energy Energy use, monitoring and renewable energy production
Comfort and Indoor human well-being and functional characteristics of
safety interior spaces and safety (seismic behavior, fire resistance,
etc.)
Outdoor quality Impacts on the outdoor environment
The non-homogenous distribution of credit weights in the macro-
areas can affect the final rate since the high performance of a building
in the heaviest area can balance possible lacks in other categories.
In particular, it can be noticed that the most balanced protocol is
Green Star, immediately followed by BREEAM, while the less homo-
geneous ones are CASBEE and ITACA, in which very high importance is
given to Comfort and Safety and Energy macro-areas respectively.
According to this, a building assessed by using Green Star needs to have
good performance in each macro-area in order to achieve a high final
rate. On the other hand, although the global sustainability concept
should lead to include in every tool the same fundamental credits, the
non-homogenous distribution of weights is a natural consequence of the
local sustainability criteria.
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Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960
The analysis shows that there are both qualitative and quantitative
differences among the five rating systems. It is noticeable that the
protocols cannot be considered homogeneous from neither points of
view and therefore, in order to define a common “sustainability lan-
guage”, the qualitative differences should be reduced. Indeed, in each
green building rating tool, it is appropriate to assign different weights
to the credits depending on the country needs and characteristics.
However, the most significant sustainability aspects (in terms of credits)
should be hopefully included in all the rating systems. Summarizing the
results shown in Table 2, it appears that the following sustainability
issues, which are now included only in few protocols, should be con-
sidered in all the rating tools, in order to provide a proper and thorough
sustainability certification:
• Environmental hazards and seismic risks;
• LCA aspects;
• Recycle and reuse of construction and operational waste;
• Visual and thermal indoor comfort;
• Heat island effect;
• Global warming;
• Noise and light pollution in outdoor environment.
In line with the concept of Smart development [61], it appears
crucial to assess the level and typology of environmental risks, in order
to make buildings safer and occupants able to face these kinds of issues.
B. Mattoni et al.
Fig. 4. Credits distribution in the new six macro-areas.
The considered hazards could be different in each certification system
according to country needs and characteristics (e.g., in Japan and in
Italy the seismic risk should be taken into considerations, while in other
countries flooding or tornado should be considered). Furthermore, as
discussed by [17], green rating systems should involve in their eva-
luation procedure the LCA of materials which allows assessing the
materials sustainable features during their whole life cycle (from cradle
to grave). In fact, the insulation materials are significantly different
among each other in terms of embodied energy and consequently in
terms of environmental impact [62].
Furthermore, as highlighted in the introduction section, the two
approaches used for developing the sustainability tools are the criteria-
based systems and the LCA method. In the first one a lower environ-
mental performance obtained in a category can be compensated by a
higher performance in another category. On the contrary, the LCA-
based approach allows quantifying the environmental impact at all le-
vels, providing also the possibility of easy comparisons of the final re-
sults in terms of the effective reduction of the overall impact. These
considerations explain why the integration of these two approaches is
needed in the development of upgraded versions of Green Building
Rating tools [17,63,64].
On the other hand, also the impact of buildings on climate, both in
terms of global (global warming) and localized effects (urban heat is-
land), and the outdoor pollution, should be carefully considered and
evaluated in each sustainability procedure, since these environmental
problems are equally diffused and considerable in urban areas all over
the world. Finally, the issues related to indoor comfort (both visual and
thermal), which are now evaluated only by few of the analyzed rating
tools, should be included in each of them, since one of the main targets
of sustainability is to guarantee a good quality of life of the users.
In addition to this, the rating tools should also take into account
aspects related to the Outdoor Comfort and to the effects on the energy
performance of a single building caused by the interaction with nearby
buildings. These two topics would, indeed, greatly affect the
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Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960
sustainability rate and environmental impact of a building, but they are
not considered in any of the analyzed certification tools. The liveability
of outdoor places and, consequently, the amount and intensity of
human activities in external spaces, is strongly associated to the climate
conditions in terms of wind speed, air temperature, solar radiation and
relative humidity [65–67]. A correct design of a building outdoor space
would allow to improve the thermal comfort of the occupants and it
could be a further useful sustainability indicator. From the energy point
of view, evaluating the mutual impacts of a network of buildings on
their energy dynamics by means of the Inter Building Effect (IBE)
parameter, would allow to carry out more accurate energy simulations
and to assess building performance from a broader perspective, parti-
cularly in dense urbanized areas [68]. Both these topics strongly de-
pend on the climate, local and site features of each country. Due to this,
as previously stated, the quantitative value and the weight of these
aspects could be differently assigned by each protocol depending on the
country needs and characteristics.
6. Conclusions
Nowadays, green building rating systems are applied on new
buildings, refurbished and existing buildings around the world. Starting
from the overview of the certification procedures developed in many
countries, this review highlights the different sustainability concepts
adopted worldwide in order to rate the environmental sustainability of
buildings and aiming at reducing energy consumptions and environ-
mental impacts during the construction, management and operational
phases of a building. As a matter of fact, two GBRS categories exist: the
first one, based on the local version of a worldwide recognized tool; the
second one, represented by tools developed and employed only in the
individual local situations. Considering the distinction between a
“global” sustainability and a “local” one, it is worthy to notice that this
difference can lead to lacks in terms of analyzed sustainability issues
that should be hopefully included, although with different proper
B. Mattoni et al.
Table 2
Main features of each category considered by the five protocols.
Site
Ecological Aspects
Local Characteristics
Hazards
Water
Water Uses and Monitoring
Water Recycling Systems
Energy
Thermal Loads Control
Energy Monitoring
Renewable Energy
Production
Comfort and safety
Thermal Comfort
Visual and Acoustic Comfort
Air Quality and Ventilation
Indoor Pollutants
Building Amenities
Flexibility and Functional
Adaptability
Home Office
Seismic and Security
Aspects
Materials
Eco-Friendly Materials Use
Life Cycle Assessment
Construction and
Demolition Waste
Management
Outdoor quality
Global Warming
Heat Island Effect
Pollutant Emissions
Noise Pollution
Light Pollution
Operational Waste
Management
Sustainable Transport and
Mobility
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960
weights, regardless of home country.
Furthermore, five widespread and well known green building rating
systems (CASBEE, Green Star, BREEAM, LEED and ITACA) were ana-
CASBEE Green Star BREEAM LEED ITACA
X X X X lyzed and compared in order to better understand the fundamental
X X X X X aspects related to sustainability assessment, by means of a methodo-
X X logical approach based on the macro-aggregation areas definition. The
comparison among the labelling systems was carried out defining six
X X X X X
X X X X X
new macro-aggregation areas (site, water, energy, comfort and safety,
materials and outdoor quality) in which the credits of each tool were
X X X X X distributed after a normalization procedure. Qualitative and quantita-
X X X X X tive differences were highlighted. From the quantitative point of view,
X X X X X
“Energy” area is always the heaviest, except for CASBEE, in which the
highest importance is given to “Comfort and safety” area. Overall,
X X X X “Water” has the lowest impact on the final scores, followed by
X X X X “Materials” and “Outdoor quality”. On the other hand, taking into ac-
X X X X X count the qualitative aspects, the sustainability principles and features
X X X X
X X X
related to the “Energy” and “Water” areas are common to all GBRSs.
X X X Regarding the other macro-areas, the most significant dissimilarities
can be observed in “Comfort and safety” and “Outdoor quality”.
X In general, CASBEE considers the highest number of sustainability
X
issues, unlike ITACA: the latter rating system results to be the less
complete since only a few sustainability aspects are included. The en-
X X X X X vironmental hazards and seismic risks, LCA aspects, recycle and reuse
X X of construction and operational waste, visual and thermal indoor
X X X comfort, heat island effect, global warming and noise and light pollu-
tion in outdoor environment were selected as the main sustainability
aspects which are now considered only by few rating tools among the
X X analyzed ones. In the opinion of the authors, the green building rating
X X X systems should take into account all the mentioned aspects in order to
X X X X
provide a proper environmental sustainability certification. The rating
X X
X X tools should also take into account aspects related to the Outdoor
X X X Comfort and to the effects of a neighboring network of buildings on the
energy performance of a single building. These topics appear to be
X X X X X additional useful sustainability indicators but, currently, they are not
considered in any of the five analyzed green building rating systems. In
addition, also the operator’s discretion during the sustainability
Fig. 5. CASBEE score normalization on the basis of 100.
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B. Mattoni et al. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018) 950–960

Table 3
New macro-areas and scores for each green rating tool.

Site Water Energy Comfort and Safety Materials Outdoor Quality Total

CASBEE Original 1.05 0.30 2 3.50 1.20 1.95 10

Normalized 10.50 3.00 20.00 35.00 12.00 19.50 100
Green Star Original 9 12 22 17 14 15 89
Normalized 10.11 13.48 24.72 19.10 15.73 16.85 100
BREEAM Original 25 11 27 19 17 14 113
Normalized 22.12 9.73 23.89 16.81 15.04 12.39 100
LEED Original 14 12 37 18 9 8 98
Normalized 14.29 12.24 37.76 18.37 9.18 8.16 100
ITACA Original 5 6 42 30 12 5 100
Normalized 5.00 6.00 42.00 30.00 12.00 5.00 100

[9] Official Journal of the European Communities. Directive 2002/91/EC of the

Fig. 6. Comparison among the new six macro-areas of the analyzed rating tools.
labelling has a great impact on the final score and it deserves to be
carefully considered.
Today, it is fundamental to pay attention to a worldwide sustain-
ability, assessing which issues have more influence on the performance
rate. The analysis performed through this review can give users a
deeper knowledge of the whole aspects included in these tools. It also
lays the groundwork for identifying common sustainability aspects and
issues that should be included in all the rating systems, although with
different weights for each country (accounting the local specific fea-
tures), in order to provide a proper sustainability certification and to
compare the buildings sustainability level worldwide.
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