Study for Improvement of Domestic System through Regulation based on Comparison of Green Building Certification System Analysis - Focused on the G-SEED, BREEAM

1.1. Background and purpose of the study

A new, globally competitive certification regime is being attempted, by integrating the GBCC system and the house performance certification system based on the existing Construction Act and the Housing Act in 2013. The new regime, given with a fancy brand name that goes G-SEED (Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design,) however lacks any improvement of the environment certification criteria for offices, schools, or commercial facilities. The only difference it has is some new items for evaluating multi-unit houses for environmental certification in addition to what they already had in the existing housing performance certification regime. The issues regarding relevance of the domestic certification system and improvement of the criteria to ensure a practically valid set of standard have been pointed out and demanded for a long time. However, such voices have never been heard as the system has been revised repeatedly. For this reason, the housing suppliers in Korea obtain LEED certifications of the United States to increase the properties’ market values and promotional advantages. As of 2013, 95 buildings have been registered or filed for a registrations, indicating the LEED has firmly placed its roots in Korean market.

Recently, attempts have been made to obtain BREEAM certification, which is a green building certification regime in UK. BRE, the operating agency of BREEAM system, provides customized certification systems in consideration of the culture and climatic characteristics of each country where possible candidate buildings are located.¹⁾

Even if the BRE provides a customized scheme for Korea, it is basically a necessity to analyze the differences between BREEAM and the domestic scheme (G-SEED.) Especially, due to the fact that LEED, GREEN STAR, or other systems have been developed based on BREEAM, the analysis on the background, purpose, evaluation items and the methods is an essential step to endow the domestic system to have a even a slight chance to present itself as a something resembling a competitive scheme in the global market.

In many previous studies, the systems in effect in foreign countries have been compared and analyzed to provide a suggestion for improvement. However, they went no further than the comparison between the allocation of point and proportion between items. The fundamental analysis and comparison between the systems still have a far way to go. The legal analysis, which provide a background for the certification systems’ understanding, may be a way to find out the purpose and directions.

In this regard, the purpose of this study is to compare the building regulations and the Law on Promotion of Green Buildings, which have been the basis of the G-SEED and BREEAM, as a basis to analyze the two systems and provide a suggestion for future direction for G-SEED.

1.2. Method and scope of the study

The comparison of the systems in Korea and other countries has been made in terms of the characteristics of the systems, the evaluation items, and the allocation of the score. However, a system in a country is based on the legal system of ti, and the way an individual item is handled differ in terms of the contents and the methods.

This study was conducted with the new office buildings, in accordance with the government’s initiative requiring improvement of the energy performances of the new buildings, for, firstly, identifying the differences between the provisions of the laws that provide legal basis for th systems, by comparative analysing the Law on Promotion of Green Buildings and the Plan for Building Energy Saving Plan, as well as the legal bases of the BREEAM system, which are the Building Regulations and the App[roved Documents. Secondly, in accordances with the characteristics of the certification system which aims to reduce the carbon emission and saving the energy for buildings, the method and contents of the building energy evaluation were analyzed to suggested a way to improve what Koreans have introduced as their own version of green building certification system.

2.1. Green building related laws in Korea

1) The Law on Promotion of Green Buildings (or A.K.A. Green Building Act)

In February 2013, the Ministry of Land and Transportation enacted the Green Building Act, base don the Basic Law on Low-Carbon Green Growth as the legal basis for various government initiatives to meet the goal of reducing the green house emission of buildings to 26.9% compared to BAU. The law is composed of a total of five chapters and 31 articles, which are mainly about (1) planning and interconnecting, (2) establishment of information systems, (3) policies on energy management for buildings, (4) supportive organizations, and (5) project support and reporting system establishment. ²⁾

Table 1.

The Contents of Green Buildings Act

Fig 1.

Operating Systems of G-SEED & BERC

Chapter 1 of the law is about presenting the purpose, definitions, and basic principles of the law, while Chapter 2 (Basic plans for establishing a green building) requires that the basic plans for green house gas reduction, man-power training, development plans, or other execution plans should be established in every five years. Chapter 3(Building energy and green house gas management measures) requires that there should be an expectable information system, such as the green house emission status survey. Chapter 4 (Execution of the green building classification system) defines the details of the execution of the certifications for invigoration and energy management with efficiency for buildings. Chapter 4 is about the man-power training, development, pilot programs, and incentives to promote green buildings. The Green Building Act functions as the legal basis for the government to propagate the ‘realization of green construction.’

Green Building Certification has been operated in accordance with the existing Construction Act, like the Building Energy Saving Plan and the Certification of the Building Energy Efficiency, until Chapter 4 of the Green Building Act was introduced. When the legal basis was transferred, the were some changes made. However, there are still possibilities of confusion because the Green Building Certification system and the Building Energy Efficiency Certification Program are jointly managed by the Ministry of Land and Transportation + Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Land and Transportation + Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Resources, due to conflicts of interests between these ministries and confused civil servants.

2.2. British Building Regulations

The construction laws of Britain is composed of Building Act, Building Regulations, and Approved Document A-P. Britain strengthened its 2006 goal of reducing the carbon emission level by 28% compared to the level in 2002 by 25%, resulting in a goal to reduce the carbon emission by 46% from 2002. As such, Britain have been updating its Building Regulations continuously, with a view to realize zero-carbon emission by the year of 2019. (Fig. 2)

Fig 2.

Building Regulations & CO2 Emissions in UK

The Building Regulations' are composed of 10 chapters (Table 4)with a view to realize health safety, welfare, and convenience of the human users of the buildings as well as saving of fuel and power, prevention of water waste and contamination, preservation of the environment and improvement therefore, promotion of sustainable development, and prevention of crimes, by regulating the design, constructions, demolition, buildings, services related to buildings, or equipment.⁵⁾

Table 2.

The Contents of Building Regulations

Especially, with regard to use of energy in buildings, Part 6 specifies the minimal required energy performance of building and carbon emission performance. For the sake of practical implementation of Part 6, the Approval Document⁶⁾ Part L(Conservation of Fuel and Power)has been introduced to provide a method of saving energy.

Part L is composed of New Dwellings(L1A), New Buildings Other than Dwelling(L2A), Existing Dwellings(L1B), and Existing Building Other than Dwelling(L2B) which correspond to different uses of buildings, while requiring that the carbon emission limits of the existing laws are observed. (Fig. 3)

Fig 3.

CO2 Emissions of Part L

Part L2A, which covers new office buildings is composed of ① Introduction; generals, ②The requirements : legal requirements included in the building regulations, ③General guidance : definitiones and building acts, etc., ④Design Standards : detailed design requirements and technical advises, ⑤Quality of construction and commissioning, ⑥Providing information, and ⑦ Model designs. Especially, ④ requires that the actual emission ratio of the building (BER) and required emission ratio in accordance with the Building Regulations (TER) are calculated, in order to ensure the BER does not exceed TER.

Fig 5.

BER and TER of BREEAM

2.3. Comparative analysis on the laws and regulations related to green buildings

The Green Building Act and the Building Regulations were compared to one another to show that, while they are alike in the purpose of the reducing carbon emission and saving energy used in buildings and the fact that both regimes apply quantitative approaches for their goals, the biggest difference was the approach to their goals, which were summarized as in Table 3.

Table 3.

Domestic and International Green Building Regulations Comparison

In Britain, all buildings are required to satisfy the regulations in the Construction Act, regardless of their BREEAM certifications. Also, the supporting documents for the Building Regulations, the method of calculating the carbon emission amount and precautions for designing a building are presented.

On the other hand, the Korean regulations only presents an overall, more general goals, which are not legally binding upon buildings. Rather than providing concrete instructions, they cover general information for executing lower-level schemes. With regard to the energies used in buildings, mose of the buildings are require to execute their energy saving plans. However, the scheme is still rather superficial, insufficient for making energy evaluation judgements. Therefore, it was obvious that a close link between the building energy and the scheme was wanting.

With this, it became obvious that G-SEED and BREEAM are fundamentally different from the very background of introducing the laws, as summarized in Fig. 5 and Fig 6 below.

Fig 5.

Based G-SEED Energy Rating

Fig 6.

Based BREEAM Energy Rating

3.1. Green building certification

In the year 2002, this certification system was first introduced. After 13 revisions since then, now it has an evaluation system as shown in Table 4. After its introduction, the classification levels, the targets for certifications, evaluation items, and the method of scoring saw a major overhaul, while the existing evaluation/bonus items were changed to mandatory/evaluation items, making it look like LEED or BREEAM a little bit more. By multiplying the weighting factors to each total score of each item, the score was calculated out of a total of 100 points, which are then classified into Normal (Green tier 4,) Good (Green tier 3,) Very Good (Green tier 2,) and Excellent (Green tier 1).

Table 4 .

G-SEED : Revision & Characteristics

In 2013, the introduction of the Green Building Act changed the composition of the system into seven specialized fields. But, the criteria for evaluation, the contents, and the methods are unchanged. With regard to the energy of the building, the item of ‘Use of Sustainable Energy’ was newly introduced in 2008 and the Building Energy Efficiency Certification Criteia was newly introduced in addition to EPI for energy evaluation in 2010. However, as the result sets forth that the more advantageous score of the two is to be applied, it is far from being a relevant criteria of evaluating energy saving performance.

Table 5.

Category of BREEAM

Table 6.

Minimum Standard of BREEAM

3.2. BREEAM

BRE first developed BREEAM(Building Research Establishment’s environmental Assessment Method) in 1990s. It is the world’s first comprehensive green building evaluation system. It has become the basis for many other systems, such as G-SEED, LEED, and GREEN STAR, both in Korea and other countries.

BREEAM is subject to the influence caused by the revisions of Building Regulations. Due to the strengthening of the emission regulation goals in 2010, the Scheme Structure, Minimum Standard, energy evaluation method, and some other evaluation items were changed. The portion of BREEAM 2008 which were operated depending on the types of buildings were now integrated under BREEAM New Construction 2011 as a comprehensive guideline to provide additional contents by the types of buildings. In BREEAM 2011, the allocated points to the maintenance and energy evaluation items increased to 12 and 9, respectively, it serves as a solemn reminder of the strengthening regulatory grasp of the emission.

BREEAM suggests, like the mandatory requirements of LEED, the Minimum Standard⁹⁾. While the required conditions to be met are different by the tiers, the requirements for Sustainable Procurement, Visual Comfort, Water Quality, and Responsible Sourcing should be met in all tiers. Also, the ‘Energy 01. Reduction of CO₂ Emissions' is given as the minimal requirements only for the Excellent and Outstanding grade, applying a more strict criteria for higher tiers.

That is, while the pass to very good grades meet the requirements of the Building Regulations, the BREEAM assessment is more about the sustainability and eco-friendliness than energy. Here, the higher tiers are subject to more strick criteria, as they are to become the leaders of the green buildings.

3.3. Comparative analysis of the energy evaluation items

(1) Comparison of evaluation items

G-SEED assesses 6 items, as the ‘Energy’ and ‘Prevention of Pollution’ are combined into a single item of ‘Energy and Environmental Pollution.’ On the other hand, BREEAM evaluates nine items. The common items between the two schemes are ‘energy performance,’ ‘installation of energy meters,’ ‘lighting energy,’ and ‘the use of sustainable energy sources.’ In BREEAM, evaluation of the high efficiency equipments, such as the coolers, elevators, and escalator are also included. As for the mandatory items, G-SEED includes 2.1.1 Energy Performance, while BREEAM requires Energy 0.1 Reduction of emissions, ‘Energy 02. Energy Monitoring,’ and Energy 04. Low and Zero Carbon Technologies.’

Table 7.

Energy Category : G-SEED & BREEAM 2011

The energy performance valuation of these two schemes are assigned with higher amount of scores, 12 and 15 points, respectively. And, they serve the same purpose of reducing energy consumption and carbon emission. However, the method of evaluation differs, in accordance with the legal basis shown in Chapter 2. The Green Building Certification uses EPI and the Building Energy Efficiency Grade, while BREEAM uses the Building Regulations and the Approved Documents as the source of the methods. Here, an attempt is made to compare these methods.

(2) Comparison of the method of evaluating energy

The energy evaluation of BREEAM is changed from the existing EPC (Energy Preference Certification, 220008) to EPR (Energy Performance Rating, 2011.) While EPC only concerned the carbon emission of the target building compared to the standard, EPR does not present a minimum requirement for the emission but, instead, evaluates the three elements of the energy consumption, energy demand, and carbon emission in a comprehensive manner to calculate the ratio of saving compared to the national building. Then, by using the value calculated using the Building Performance Translator, the EPRNC is identified by applying it with the weighting factors, which will rate the target building with a score ranging from 1 to 15.

Table 8 .

BREEAM & G-SEED: Energy rating

<Table 9> shows that the minimum score can be obtained when the EPR ratio is 0.05, which is a 5% improvement from the requirement for emission in the Building Regulations. This interprets to an energy consumption reduction of 30% or higher.

Table 9.

Calculations of BREEAM EPR

On the other hand, G-SEED is a method of evaluating the energy performance, by taking the more advantageous score from EPI or the Building Energy Efficiency Certification classes. As mentioned above, it is far from relevance in saving energy. Only 65 points for the sum of the EPI average is all that is needed to earn the weighting factor of 0.4, to give the building 12 x0.4 = 4.8 points, which qualifies the building above the minimum requirements. There, the building now means the energy saving requirements. EPI 65 points is the lowest requirement to qualify for a normal grade building in accordance with the Construction Act. therefore, the minimum requirement for EPI is set too low, which is far from desirable as a means to promote green construction.

Energy Consumption Evaluation Score Y

$\[ \mathrm{Energy\; Consumption\; Evaluation\; Score\; Y}=15\times \left(\mathrm{EPI\; Points}-60\right)÷25 \]$

(Equation 1)

Also, the Building Energy Efficiency Certification grades divides the total energy demands from heating, air conditioning, hot water, lighting, and ventilation, dividing it by the total floor area and converting it using the correction factor to calculate the primary energy consumption amount. This is not about calculating the total energy volume of the building but to evaluating the energy consumption by each component.

In BREEAM, in measuring the energy performance as above, not only the amount of energy but also the amount of carbon emission is considered, based on objective and quantitative results, which are converted into scores and used to grade the buildings. Also, to earn the points, it is required to improve the energy efficacy by 5% or more. The higher tiers should make an improvement by 25% or 40%.

On the other hand, G-SEEDs evaluates the buildings with document-evaluated EPI or the energy efficiency certifications, which is determined by the primary energy consumption level. While it is possible to identify the amount of energy used in a building, it is not possible to know the amount of carbon emission. Also, if EPI, which is rather easier to obtain than the building energy efficiency certification, it is difficult to measure the actual energy consumption. If the EPI is about evaluating the design criteria for energy saving, the certification is desired to use the a stronger criteria to measure the efficiency rates or demand a certain level of EPI average by default and apply the acquired energy certification as a weighted value, in an effort to strengthen the evaluation criteria.